True Beauty

Julia and I are exploring the meaning of Beauty, intersecting Beauty with the word of God, and letting Beauty live in our lives. Inspired by a joint feeling of just not measuring up in the beauty category, we’re tackling some hard questions:

• What is Beauty? And does it reside in me?
• And when my husband says that I’m beautiful, how can I receive those words as truth in a culture that says the opposite?
• What am I going to teach my daughters about Beauty?
• And most importantly, what does the Word of God say about Beauty?

Join us as we converse about a topic that touches the heart of all women.
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Hi, it’s me again! In an effort to respond to both of your letters, Melissa, as I said I would, I’m back again this week, addressing these words.
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I don’t think Cinderella’s life was all that glamorous. I mean–glass slippers?! Ouch!

Give me running shoes any day!

That’s to say nothing about the dress:

I bet she just threw some coins in that fountain, and is peering at her reflection, wishing that cinched waistband felt more like yoga pants.
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Extend yourself some grace, Melissa. Life isn’t a fairytale. Marriage isn’t a fairytale; not even close.

I think your words resonate with a lot of mamas; they sure resonated with me, and there is no baby cookin’ in this oven!

Our princes walk in the door, and all we want is a break. We see them as our knights in shining armor, rescuing us from the constantness of motherhood–and we want that rescue to begin immediately!

Our princes want to rescue their lady, they really do, but they also want to kiss their bride and all of that gushy stuff.
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When you started talking about your prince; I thought of my garden.

Weird, I know. You talk about our histories, and I think of The Ugly Duckling. You talk about your prince, and I’m about to talk my garden.

Bear with me.

You know gardening. You took this lovely picture of your peas flowering:

You know that gardeing takes work.

When flowers, herbs and vegetables all have their place, and are well maintained, the garden flourishes. It’s beautiful to look at. Each plant compliments the other.

 

Let the garden grow unattended for a week. Its probably okay.

Let the garden grown unattended for a month–there’s a problem. Weeds take over.

Isn’t gardening the perfect metaphor for marriage? Marriage takes work. When you stop working at it, the weeds grow.

But–when we and our princes are gardening our marriages—beautiful things happen!

We flourish.
We compliment one another.
We are more beautiful.

Beautiful, because our husbands cultivate our lovliness through love, adoration, and by rescuing us from motherhood every once in awhile.
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So, I don’t know. Hopefully Cinderella was a gardener. And after this:

there was a lot of gardening going on, so that she could reveal her most beautiful self in glass slippers and binding waistbands for all those terrible Disney sequels that never measure up to the original.

Blogger has been down for about 30 hours now so please pardon our tardiness 🙂

Julia and I are exploring the meaning of Beauty, intersecting Beauty with the word of God, and letting Beauty live in our lives. Inspired by a joint feeling of just not measuring up in the beauty category, we’re tackling some hard questions:

• What is Beauty? And does it reside in me?
• And when my husband says that I’m beautiful, how can I receive those words as truth in a culture that says the opposite?
• What am I going to teach my daughters about Beauty?
• And most importantly, what does the Word of God say about Beauty?

Join us as we converse about a topic that touches the heart of all women.
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Before I get started, I must ask your forgiveness. Three weeks ago you wrote a beautiful letter in response to mine. You poured out your heart, and offered grace to me.

And my response? Lady Gaga.

The post really was well-intentioned. I didn’t mean to put Lady Gaga up on some pedestal. To be honest, saying I “love” her might have been a bit of a stretch. Truth be told, I know nothing of her politics, personal life, or even all of her music. I do enjoy grooving to her tunes when I’m working out, or to motivate myself on my way to work out. As I told you in an email—if Amy Grant could kick it like Gaga does, I’d totally jam to that.

I realize, too, that both the song and the Glee episode had implications of homosexuality. I absolutely did not want to go there. There was truth in the message, for what it was, without opening that can of worms.

My letter was on topic, as far as our theme about Beauty, but it ignored the words from your heart. You are right, friend. When things get serious, I tend to find ways to interject humor and fun. All of that is well and good, but not when I ignore you and come with my own agenda.

Thank you for your grace in your response last week. Please forgive my insensitivity?

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So, in light of my words above, I in many ways, feel like I’m responding to two your letters.

A few weeks back you wrote these words:

Our histories are meant to be told because they are parts of His Story. Our histories, however sordid or bleak, are meant to be told, meant to be shared as the beautiful gifts that they really are!

Julia, we can’t hide our history. We can’t toss it out in the trash like a group of journals and live as if it never happened.

I love this.

It made me think, oddly enough, of The Ugly Duckling, the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Hang with me. I know it’s random. I can explain.

You know the tale. A mother duck’s eggs hatch, and one of the ducklings has brown feathers, and isn’t beautiful like the others. He suffers ridicule and torment over his appearance, and wanders from place to place searching for love. After surviving the cold winter alone, he joins a flock of swans, because he realizes that he is one of them. Finally–he found love and acceptance.

“It’s already been written–The Ugly Duckling.” 

The lyrics say:

Till a flock of swans spied him there and very soon agreed
You’re a very fine swan indeed!
A swan? Me a swan? Ah, go on!
And he said yes, you’re a swan
Take a look at yourself in the lake and you’ll see
And he looked, and he saw, and he said
I am a swan! Wheeeeeeee!

You’re a swan, Melissa. You’re a swan, because God made you. He made you beautiful, out of his very own image. He redeemed you, and your story–His Story. You went through the ugly-brown-feathered awkwardness and wound up like this:

Only God can make ugliness like that so beautiful. You, my friend, are a very fine swan, indeed!

Julia and I are exploring the meaning of Beauty, intersecting Beauty with the word of God, and letting Beauty live in our lives. Inspired by a joint feeling of just not measuring up in the beauty category, we’re tackling some hard questions:

• What is Beauty? And does it reside in me?
• And when my husband says that I’m beautiful, how can I receive those words as truth in a culture that says the opposite?
• What am I going to teach my daughters about Beauty?
• And most importantly, what does the Word of God say about Beauty?

Join us as we converse about a topic that touches the heart of all women.
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Dear Julia,

Two weeks ago I wrote, inspired, about being parts of His Story.  And I know that’s true- my history, my present, and even my future are Redeemed by His Blood.  They’re being used for His Glory.

But the hardest person to preach the gospel to is always myself.

Lately, my story feels like Cinderella’s— and not the good parts.  I feel like all I ever do is cook, or change diapers, or feed babies, or edit photos, or clean (when the mood strikes me), or paint cabinet doors (whose idea was it to remodel the kitchen herself?!).  My hair is limp, my face feels the greasiness of summer humidity, and my daily uniform is a lightweight pair of paint spattered PJ/sweatpants because I lent a friend all of my maternity clothes prior to finding out about our surprise baby on the way.

And then my prince walks through the door and reaches out to embrace me…

But wait, nope, the Cinderella girl is pushing the prince away. She’s gone back to cooking or is sulking with her dinner plate.

Is this what happily ever after is supposed to be?
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Hop on over to Julia’s home on the web to read the rest of this post.

Julia and I are exploring the meaning of Beauty, intersecting Beauty with the word of God, and letting Beauty live in our lives. Inspired by a joint feeling of just not measuring up in the beauty category, we’re tackling some hard questions:

• What is Beauty? And does it reside in me?
• And when my husband says that I’m beautiful, how can I receive those words as truth in a culture that says the opposite?
• What am I going to teach my daughters about Beauty?
• And most importantly, what does the Word of God say about Beauty?

Join us as we converse about a topic that touches the heart of all women.
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My Dear Melissa,

I have three confessions to make.

The first confession is that I am a “Gleek”. Yes, I love Glee!

Your voice once echoed through Carnegie Hall. You know what it’s like to sing beautifully.

I don’t.

You dance. You dance in costume, no less.

I cannot dance. Unless I’m sitting down. I’m an excellent chair dancer.

But–in the privacy of my kitchen as I cook for my family during naptime, I dance and sing along with those crazy Glee kids, pretending to be a rock-star-diva.

Second confession, I love Lady Gaga.

Sure, she wears dresses that look like hanging meat and plunks a hunk of raw steak on her head for a hair bow, but that chick can kill a performance!

photo credit

I think that what’s so appealing about her to so many people is that she’s an original. We all are, but she really lets is all hang out—in her music, in her fashion. She just doesn’t care.

So—on this week’s episode of Glee, my two loves collided, and it was too amazing, and too fitting not to talk about!

The episode started out with one of the characters, Rachel, getting her nose broken, and then grappling with the decision to get her Jewish-looking nose “fixed”. The Glee Club’s teacher, Mr. Shuester (Mr. Shue for short), had this to say:

The thing you’d most like to change about yourselves is the most interesting part of you.

Mr. Shue then made it the Glee Club’s assignment for the week, to figure out what that “thing” was that they most wanted to change about themselves, and to own it, by putting it in big letters across their shirts. Rachel, who made the decision not to get a nose-job, put “NOSE” across her shirt. Each Glee Club member revealed the “flaws” they saw in themselves.

Then, they performed a rockin’ rendition of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way.

As I watched, this is the third, and probably the most embarrassing confession yet, I found myself almost in tears.

In this world where kids are mercilessly bullied, sometimes to the point of suicide, for choices, flaws, or sometimes for no perceivable reason at all—the message of this episode and Lady Gaga’s song is to love yourself, and to love the flaws—because that’s how God made us, and there is God in each of us.

This message makes me hop out of my chair and do a happy dance.

I’m beautiful in my way ‘cause God makes no mistakes… ~Lady Gaga

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What would go on my shirt?

Definitely EXTRA SKIN.

Turns out Mr. Shue is right.

The thing I would like most to change about myself is one of the most interesting parts about me.

I carried twin girls inside me for 35 weeks, and gave birth to over 12 pounds of baby! That excess skin that puckers around my waistline tells that story. I’m proud of that story, and dare I say, proud of my EXTRA SKIN—it’s a shirt I’d wear proudly while I dance around my kitchen in all my rock-star-divaness.

Julia and I are exploring the meaning of Beauty, intersecting Beauty with the word of God, and letting Beauty live in our lives. Inspired by a joint feeling of just not measuring up in the beauty category, we’re tackling some hard questions:

• What is Beauty? And does it reside in me?
• And when my husband says that I’m beautiful, how can I receive those words as truth in a culture that says the opposite?
• What am I going to teach my daughters about Beauty?
• And most importantly, what does the Word of God say about Beauty?

Join us as we converse about a topic that touches the heart of all women.
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My sweet Julia,
When I was pregnant with the girls I mad a drastic decision to throw out all my journals.  Those journal contained my history from 7th through 12th grade.  It is a history I am not proud of and it was not something I wanted my children to stumble on unprepared.

I did not want them reading of

• how I would chase boys around the playground hoping they might notice me
• hands that reached where they should not of without permission
• the deep miserable longing to be loved and accepted
• that longing so deep that I laid bare before two young men
• feelings of failure that drove me to food for comfort
• my pride that I knew everything and that no one could teach me anything
• volumes of depressing poetry relaying my fear that I would never be good or beautiful enough

Like you, I did not want my children peering into the vivid and painful history painted by my young perspective.

But at the same time, my rough history and yours are

His Story.

His Story of redemption.
His Story of reaching down and buying back with His very life that which others had overlooked as valueless.
His Story.
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Hop on over to Julia’s blog to read the rest.