YOU are beautiful!!!! Beautiful? I have 4 children which means for me, most days my hair is up in a messy bun, my makeup is limited to lip balm, and I have food on my clothes that one of my children lovingly left for me. My 1yr old seems to think I am his napkin. lol. I have 10 extra pounds left over from each one of my amazing kids…. The truth is that I look in the mirror at times and just laugh. I usually feel anything but beautiful. Before kids, I was neatly put together and felt beautiful often. Since kids, well, when I take the time to spruce up… I feel pretty ok. I admit that I have some nagging goals for health & what beauty is that overwhelm my mind and some days I just feel way less than beautiful. I imagine that for many reasons, most women out there have a similar kind of story.
So we fall prey to what our society says we should do. We obsessively pursue “Healthy” living, beauty treatments, shopping…none of which are bad in themselves :o) but still leave us wanting.
As women, no matter how much we have been taking care of ourselves we still deal with feeling “less than beautiful” . Right? There is evidence: So many female music artists who have a songs addressing feeling beautiful… Inside and out. Most of the songs are offer a self-help, accept yourself just the way you and forget what others say message. Listening to the song helps for a few min to lift our self esteem, but leaves us empty afterwords because while the message is good it is not what we really need.
When we forget what true beauty is we end up living with a “less than beautiful” attitude, (lack of confidence) Here are a few things I’ve realized about this attitude:
1) It causes you to sort of give up on things.
2) Image Depression easily sneaks in. NEVER feeling beautful.
3)We accept a failure feeling. (Diets aren’t working, house is a mess, kids ect).
4) Because we feel like a failure we give up
on God given (daily & future) purposes and even sometimes give up on God.
5) We start noticing all the other people who are beautiful to us around us, everywhere- we compare ourselves.
Feeling beautiful in our worldly mindset means we have it all put together. We assume people who are beautiful have confidence, a clean house, a perfect little world, but we can’t see their hearts.
I think sooo many of us, struggle feeling beautiful and never even realize how others see our us, or how God sees us.
Even if we get things perfect, the beautiful feeling doesn’t last too long.
There seems to be no end to the things we must do to try to keep up with the standard.
I just need to remind us: Beautiful is a heart issue. More than keeping up with looks or standards, it is a “how is your heart with God?” issue! Did you know that if you feel confident in your heart, it will start to show on the outside…. Plus, What really matters to God?
1 Sam. 16:7 “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
God made you beautiful! And He created us each individually, perfectly and guess what?
He cares about our feelings too. All our struggles, and goals, and dreams… He knows about them!
He alone can take our heart, and our dreams and turn them/us into something beautiful. He loves us enough to challenge us to be all He has planned for our lives. If something is continually bothering you… run to God, He will give you an answer for your season.
So today, that is what I did. I got up and had a little devotional time. God has been encouraging me to give Him the first part of everyday as a sort of tithe. Starting the day getting His perspective on myself and my day is really powerful, just saying.
God does know our heart even before we tell Him and he addressed the issues of my heart just as the day was starting… He told me I was beautiful!
Cheesy? Maybe, but today I really need that. I was reading in Esther, the word beautiful was used over and over in the version I was reading… Esther was recorded as being beautiful, and was sent to prepare for her future… Beauty Spa treatments…(so it is Godly :o)) lol. But, I had woken up feeling so ugly and fat, looked around at the house and felt like such a failure, and began to cry out to God that I wanted to be beautiful like Esther… God impressed on my heart, how He saw me as beautiful just they way I was and how he cared for what I was worried about and would provide a way for me. For me, it was simple instructions… eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full, Clean when necessary and take time to enjoy and teach my children.. Direct from God, the confidence I received for my for my future and the encouragement straight from God really left me feeling beautiful.
Many times it can feel that God cares about everything in life, but the way we look is off limits, something we should just accept and be happy with. As though, God does not hear our hearts and our longings.
1 John 5:15-15 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
God loves us enough to challenge us past where we have settled. If it is sin, we cannot stay there and find true satisfaction. He will take all our lack of confidence, our control issues, our sin issues, our ugly issues and give us his perspective. If we stop and listen He always speaks to our hearts of his unconditional love and then of His loving challenge and instructions for what to do.
A true confidence in God, and obedience to His word brought me what I was looking for… I felt beautiful today… from the Inside out.
So today, I pray for you that you will hear the voice of God reminding you that you are beautiful! And as you look to him He will give you confidence as you are empowered by his love!
BAY AREA MOMMA 
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