That night I got more time by the pool, this time alone. The
presence of the Lord was really thick that night and I got to process much
about beauty. Usually when I go ‘out’ with a group of my girlfriends, I usually
struggle quite a bit with insecurity. Sometimes I still feel like I am learning
this ‘how to be a girl’ thing (you’ll still hear me say ‘I missed that day of
girl class’). But I think it is something the Lord is restoring and has been
restoring for a number of years now.
When I face certain situations, I have the tendency to want
to get it exactly right or just throw in the towel. I was thinking yesterday of
once in high school, I was given a math test that I knew I was massively
unprepared for, so I Christmas tree-d the whole thing right there. If I got a
bad grade, I wanted it to be because I did it on purpose and not because I had
tried and failed.
Sometimes I still feel this way with femininity. Beauty is a
risk for me.
Prior to ‘day at the beach’ I wanted to prep. You know,
shave my No-shave-vember legs, pluck some ‘I haven’t seen a real mirror in
weeks’ eyebrows, etc. But the night before we went to Zanzibar, due to a textbook
WR day of ‘being flexible’ in responding to changing circumstances, I didn’t
have time to do any of these things. Already the odds are against me. The
tendency would be to not even try when it comes to ‘get gussied up’ time.
Instead, I went for it. That night after we got back, I was
processing by the pool. I felt really impressed that the beauty that comes out
of me is not circumstantial. Yes, I still want to grow in the outward
expression of beauty. But that there is a constant truth that no matter what I
look like or feel like, I have something in my heart in THAT MOMENT that
expresses beauty and expresses something about the heart of God. When I think
about my spiritual moms (the Betsys, Joans, and Debbies) in my life, they are
graceful, beautiful, and dignified. But the thing that makes them emanate light
and life is their wisdom and kindness and warmth. The inside reality fuels the
outward expression.
Not quite a revelation I was expecting from our excursion to
the beach, but one I will gladly soak up as much as I can of.
Psalm 45:11, ‘The King greatly desires your beauty. Honor
him for he is your Lord.’
