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.