Beauty, that is a word I have always struggled with, it can be defined so many different ways, and different things are beautiful to different people. Magazines tells us we have to be a certain size or that our closets have to be filled with designer clothes. That if our skin is not perfect or flawless like every ad. That you have to have on make up and high heels. That all these things add up to define our beauty.
These things can help enhance our beauty, but those things alone do not make us beautiful. What makes us beautiful is our smile when we are happy, or the sound of our laugh, how our eyes light up when we get excited. Our hearts, passion, and zeal for the life that we hold. What makes us beautiful is when we cry ugly tears over the things that break our heart, or how we love others around us so fiercely and loyally. When it comes to defining beauty we have limited ourselves. To a small handfull of things of this world. We have only taken into account a sliver of all the things that make us who we are.
Take a moment to think of your favorite flower, what makes it so beautiful? Does it have to add extra colors that do not belong? Or adorn itself with jewels and pearls? Or is it simply considered beautiful in the different stages of its life?
How about when it is still a young bud not even threatening to open. But the vibrant color has already began to show. As it begins to open up to the world? Or when it is fully out, saying here I am bright and confident showing itself off to the world.
not adding extra color, or specific clothes but displayed just as it is.
Self image is always something I have struggled with since I was young. I have always been a little bit bigger, and never really into all the make up and heels. I always hated running and would pick myself apart in pictures I saw. I always rebelled against the mindset that I had to be or look a certain way, I mean we were all created uniquely. Feeling like any in depth conversation about cosmetics and cute clothes automatically meant I was being shallow and turning myself into something I am not or believing that I truly didn’t care about those kind of things.
But much like our favorite flower it can be enhanced by what’s around, whether it be surrounded by rolling green hills, or put in a vase with others, or a bouquet for a wedding day. It can be surrounded by so much that can help enhance its own beauty.
But the truth is God has been taking me on a journey the past 4 years. A journey down the road on what beauty means, on what he sees in me and how to embrace the beauty he gave me. This race is helping bring me to a greater understanding of just that.
This past week I was reminded of the verse from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 that says:
“Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God brought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.”
Which takes me back to a conversation month 2 in a hostel in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I broke, we were once again waiting on my teammates so they could put on their “makeup” and change into “cute clothes.” Honestly I was sick of it. I didn’t get it, for a while I didn’t want to. How did they not understand that they were beautiful without it all? Why are they so focused on it?
My walls began to fall and crumble. I was tired of not understanding, of waiting and all the things. I finally let my frustrations out, probably in a rush and not very eloquently.
This is not what I expected to be surrounded by on the race, I didn’t expect to be around a bunch of people who seemed so focused on how they looked. Two of my teammates sat there and one began to speak. “Leah, for me it is artistic expression, my body is a temple and I am allowed to play around with makeup and have cute things to embrace my beauty with.” She went on to say many other things and the whole time I was fighting off the tears. I understood what she was saying but I was having trouble fully believing it for myself. “I’ve never really been into that stuff and I really don’t understand or know where to start” I finally mumbled back, she responded right back with never be afraid to ask me I’ll help you out.” So I started asking a few more questions and became slightly more adventurous. Taking her advice on stepping out and trying different colors.
But till this last week I had all but forgotten about this conversation we had so many months ago. Until I started doing insanity with my teammates and My body is a temple came up in conversation.
Thoughts flooded my head as things began to come full circle. I think I finally started to fully grasp and believe in this passage. Believe that I am not only beautiful because I am filled with the Light of God, or because I was created by a mighty king. But I am beautiful and I am allowed to enhance that beauty. The makeup, high heels, and cute clothes are tools used to enhance and be a temple of God everywhere we go and in everything we do, that working out is taking care of that temple and giving God the opportunity to use it for even greater things. That keeping up the body God has given us is another way to show respect and worship him, another way to give thanks.
Be free of thoughts that working out automatically means your obsessed, or that wanting to eat healthier means you have to go on some crash diet, freedom that being a healthier person means you have to have an eating disorder or starve yourself.
Take a moment just where you are and EMBRACE YOUR BEAUTY
EMBRACE yourself just as you are right right now.
Let that soak in you are BEAUTIFUL, Truly Magnificent !
Yup just as you are, accepted by a father who fearfully and Wonderfully Created You.
Your eyes are filled with fire, passion and mystery.
You smile and laugh light up a room and give warmth to another.
Your Body is a temple, accepted just as it is, not created to look exactly like every other temple ever made. But made uniquely just for you.
Believe that you are loved just as you are, but there is no shame in wanting to feel better about yourself, no shame in wanting to work or loose a few. Just like everything in life there are extremes, but you do not have to go to that extreme to get healthy or feel good about yourself. You can in fact pursue a healthy lifestyle that allows you to take care of the temple God has given you. Yes it takes work on your part, it takes obedience and dedication. But it is obtainable to love yourself, to not obsess or jump from extreme to the next and still work out.
Relax in who you are, You are Beautiful
