Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It has been ten months since I said goodbye to the coverup and beauty products and my hair and face have gone au naturel except on the special rare occasion. I wish I could say it has been easy and I don’t miss it at all, but the truth is I still find myself a lot more inclined to be the person behind the camera rather than in front of it.

I still get surprised when a little Thai girl braids my hair and tells me how long and beautiful it is, or when an Ecuadorean tells me they are envious of my blue eyes, or when an Albanian teenager tells me I have a beautiful face.

I don’t see what they see, because to me I left everything that makes me beautiful behind at home including my normal clothes, my curling iron, hair dye, teeth whitener, and my makeup.

I tend to make statements like you should see what I used to look like, until of course one day someone went through my old pictures on my Facebook and pulled one up. In that moment of looking at “what I used to look like” I was envious of how fit I was at the time, and thought to myself man if only I could look like that again. Then I remembered how unhappy I was at that time with how I looked. In that photo shoot I actually thought I was fat, and ugly, and I was embarrassed to be in a swim suit, but looking at that picture you could never tell the thoughts running through my mind. I remember starving myself weeks before that picture was taken and working out like crazy.

Thats when it hit me like a rock in the face, that it didn’t matter if I was the fittest I had ever been in my whole life or the most out of shape, how I looked on the outside wasn’t the solution or the key to what would bring me happiness on the inside. That even at “my best” I still wasn’t satisfied with the person staring back at me in the mirror.

Now hear me out, I am not saying to neglect your body or just let yourself go because it doesn’t matter, our bodies are the first thing that the Lord entrusts us with and wants us to be good stewards of. I am also not saying that it is wrong to want to look nice or be fit or wear makeup, I just think that ultimately it comes down to why are we doing what we are doing?

For me, those things were coming from an unhealthy state of mind. I, like many women, have throughout my life struggled greatly with comparison. From being taller than the boys in grade school, to being made fun of in middle school and part of high school for “not having any boobs”, or being told I had love handles when I was 5’10 and weighing in at 110 pounds (you can figure that math out).

From the first boy who broke my heart in junior high leaving me for another girl in my class who was more fully developed, to being compared to my high school boyfriend’s ex’s exotic features, and on to after high school when I was lifeguarding in Myrtle Beach, where people saw me as new, exciting, and beautiful, but I was constantly walking in comparison to the other female lifeguards and comparing myself to the thousands of other women I saw daily in bikinis throughout the summer.

From my most serious relationship, hearing on a regular basis how much I looked like the girl before me, the difference being that she was a model, and Irish, and had more defining facial features.

And hence a pattern was formed, every man I became emotionally involved with I was constantly compared to the one before me, and it didn’t matter how thin or in shape I was, or that I finally had fully developed parts, or if I was blonde or brunette, if I didn’t have tattoos or if I did, that I would never be able to compare to them, that I would never be enough.

I wish I could say it stopped only at the physical, but my love language is words of affirmation, and with every word spoken to me directly or in passing, all I heard was JULIA YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH.

Its funny really, because meeting me at that time you would have seen a girl who appeared confident, carefree, and un-hurtable, but it was part of the wall that I had built around my heart.

After a lifetime of being fed the lies that I wasn’t enough, I also bought into the lie that I wasn’t beautiful and that I could never be loved. Regardless of what was spoken over me, I chose to let it define who I was.

And so I walked in constant comparison, and because we live in a time when we are connected technologically with the entire world, I wasn’t just merely comparing myself to one or two women, but also to the ones before me, to the beautiful friends I was surrounded by, to the models on TV, and to the most beautiful women in the world, thinking that all my problems would be solved if “I only looked like that.”

As if beautiful women are somehow immune from having problems or getting cheated on.

I bought into the lie that happiness and contentment would come from being satisfied with the image I saw in the mirror. When in reality the true peace and contentment that I was seeking can only be found in my relationship with God. I was settling for an impossible and lesser joy.

As I started turning my life back over to the Lord, I also stopped doing my extracurricular activities that made not eating easy such as smoking, drinking every night, adheral on a regular basis, and eventually getting off birth control and my depression medication. Eventually the only thing keeping my weight down was purely the stress of school and clinicals and always being own my feet. However, when that ended combined with an ended relationship, I found myself going to a different extreme.

Even though the Lord had already begun healing and restoring different aspects of my life, my last failed relationship left me with a sense of defeate as far as my body was concerned. And so I thought, why even bother anymore? Because even though I was healing in other areas, I was still subconsciously connecting my worth to the physical.

And thus all the abuse my body had taken over the years began to catch up, and instead of trying to be at my physical best before I launched for the race, I was caught up in having that last Jimmy Johns Sub or that last food for a year, thinking I would hop on the race and it would all magically fade away.

Well I am here to tell you future racers that it can be even harder to lose weight on the race due to time changes, constant change in general, the need for comfort, ministry schedules, exhaustion, limited food budget, limited food options, different cultures, and where you are living.

Yet people still somehow find a way, so what aspect was I missing, the will, the drive, the discipline?

The more I began growing in my relationship with the Lord, the more things I began walking in freedom from, the more truths I chose to keep believing, the more I began seeing myself the way that the Lord saw me.

I had stopped looking to people for affirmation and worth, I stopped choosing to believe in the lies and letting them define my life. I stopped comparing myself to those around me and started seeing all the gifts the Lord has given me.

I want you to know that if like me you have struggled with your self-image, you are definitely not alone.

I have now traveled to 10 countries, on three different continents, all with different definitions of what is beautiful. In South America, beauty was considered to be voluptuous with light colored eyes. In Europe, beauty meant being stick thin. In India, beauty meant wearing a lot of jewelry, bright colors, and having long hair. In Asia, beauty is having light colored skin.

For the Burmese living in Thailand, it is applying a yellow tree paste on your face. In America, beauty is being tan, voluptuous with a thin waist, and stylish hair (to each their own, but you get what I am saying). Basically… beauty around the world can be defined as the dissatisfaction of what we have and the endless efforts to attain what we do not have.

So then why should we care about our bodies?

After reading a very insightful book recommended to me by a friend called Love to Eat, Hate to Eat, the writer pointed out that we should care about our body for two reasons:

First, because is the creation of the Lord.

Second, because God purchased your body with the blood of His Son.

With that being said, lets put aside comparison, impossible standards, and unrealistic expectations of the world and see what the Lord has to say about our bodies and what is beautiful to Him.

– “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:13-14)

– “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…” (Ephesian 2:10)

– “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” (1 Peter 3:3-4) The results from the Holy Spirit working in your life are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

– The excellent woman in Proverbs 31 is known for her industry, wisdom, strength, confidence, generosity, courage, knowledge, optimism, and kindness. “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears (stands in awe of) the Lord, she shall be praised.” (Proverbs 31:30). That is the defining characteristic of a godly woman.

– Our outer beauty will eventually perish, but the inner qualities that God cherishes won’t. “You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” (Isaiah 62:3).

So I had a moment this month where I was running down a dirt jungle road, a stray dog running by my side, the sun was setting over a lush green rice field, the wind in my face, sweat dripping from my body… and I felt free.

I want to be at my physical best not because I don’t feel worthy, or because I think it will make me of more worth to someone else, or because of comparison, NO, I want to be at my physical best because I want to be capable, capable of enjoying and exploring Gods creation, capable of honoring Him not only with my life but with my body as well.

Even more importantly, I want to keep working out my heart by sweating out the toxins, refining my character, building strength, and drinking the water of life.

If you are still hearing the lies than let me tell you the truth,

You are BEAUTIFUL, you are WORTHY, you are GREATLY LOVED.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then God is my beholder.