How to Be Beautiful

"You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
there is no flaw in you."
-Song of Songs 4:7

"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?"
-The woman at the well, John 4:29

"...to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes..."
-Isaiah 61:3 (partial)



I wrote a diary entry earlier this month, and although--or maybe because--it is personal, I want to share parts of it with you here on the blog. I apologize in advance for the amount of italicized words. This was written from the heart, people!

I think it's worth it sometimes to share words like this, scattered and fragmented and messy though they may be, because in that sharing, maybe we will all find each other more.

Most importantly, maybe we will find HIM.



Monday
10/3/16

5W [my 5-word headline for the day]: "I've tried to merit worthiness."


"I have asked the acting industry so often, 'What is my type?', meaning, 'Who do you say I am?' I have wanted to be cast as the captivating beauty.

The thing about sin is that it mars our originally designed beauty. I wonder if the heartbreak of the fall for women hits us there--in the crucial area of Beauty.

We long to be perfectly beautiful--I do. To be captivating, to have the power to attract everyone, to weaken their defenses, to soften hearts with my radiant beauty.

But the message of life on earth is [so often] that I am uninteresting, easily overlooked, forgettable, expendable, a commodity (actors sell themselves [as a product]), uninteresting, plain, inadequate.

And I want to fix this problem by finding someone to tell me that none of this is true about me, that I am like a radiant princess, a radiant jewel, worth being pursued, no matter the obstacles.

But sin has marred me, has stolen away my beauty and radiance, and interest, and worth. Because by the law's standard, I am not worth what I need to be worth. I am inadequate. I am lacking in quality and in power and in excellence and in beauty, because perfection is beautiful,
     and sin is not only
     evil, it is

     ugly.        

What can restore me?

I am lost forever, and no matter how much I try to dig myself out of this pit of loneliness, I only succeed in getting mud on my already deformed and unattractive form.

Under the law, I am unattractive forever, always longing for but never realizing my princess-getting-the-prince's-love dreams. . . .

Under the law, we half-men and ugly girls are left forever insufficient and groaning in our longing.

But then there's grace, grace bought by the one all-powerful, perfect lover prince letting himself be made ugly and weak for us, because only he could conquer that death-of-everything.

From a death that promised only a permanently marred form rotting into worm food, he instead came back perfect and glorified, walking through walls, appearing and disappearing,

DEFYING
NATURAL
LAWS.

For a seemingly forgotten and ruined and uninteresting church, he bought the right to not only be called beautiful and perfect and captivating, but to actually

BE
THAT
PRINCESS.      

We are...
Already but not yet."