21 Oct Inner Beauty

I saw someone once post the following on Facebook about women…

“Fake hair, fake eyelashes, fake teeth, fake color, fake singing along with other enhancements… what’s real? True beauty comes from within…”

I thought about it a lot, pondering my life and what I have learned about beauty…. I wanted to write about beauty from within and then had a couple of… emotional days… you know what I am talking about right? Sometimes it seems we can feel up, down and all around. It’s frustrating having so many thoughts and feelings a woman sometimes.

I thought: Well, forget that blog.

I have no right to talk about inward beauty.

And then I thought deeper. No.

I do have right to talk about inward beauty. I am paying attention and getting ahold of my emotions BECAUSE I know that inward beauty is what counts. I am saying to myself, Get ahold of yourself woman because I know that it matters to deal with the issues of the heart.

I have always been taught that beauty is more than outward looks…  but its taken life to develop and learn that the depth of beauty a person has comes from within. Quite frankly I probably learned the most about it after Ava (my 3^rd baby) was born. Maybe part of it was having a little girl but most of all I found myself stretched to capacity… 3 kids under 3, a husband with a demanding job and in full-time college and worship leader position at our church.

I remember being completely sleep deprived with a newborn nursing, my boys wrestling on the floor and looking around at my house thinking, “How on earth am I suppose to keep up with everyone and everything??” I felt so overwhelmed. I didn’t want anything in our family to lack.

I decided one day to read proverbs 31, A women whose life was cultivated beauty. I read it several times and it challenged me to the core.

During that time, my favorite verse was: “She rises also while it is still night, and gives food to her household.” It wasn’t just because I was nursing at 2am. Haha. There is this other part of that verse that says “she doesn’t eat the bread of idleness”. For heaven’s sakes, if you read through the chapter… this woman worked her butt off!

But what stands out to me is that you see all the rewards it gave her. Sometimes I have to tell myself, this is NOT supposed to be easy… easy is not going to make you, your house and your family be what their supposed to be. This began to teach me to look for ways to be proactive about everything.

Here’s the list of qualities in this Proverbs 31 woman:

Rare, precious, trustworthy, kind, works joyfully, goes the extra mile to get choicest goods, disciplined, enterprising, prudent with money, energetic, good steward, diligent, compassionate, generous, provident, elegant ,influential, industrious, poised, wise, manages her home, praiseworthy ,distinguished, God-fearing, honored.

True beauty goes very deep. and it takes work. Lots of work.

Beauty means “The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality”. I like that the word harmony is part of beauty. Somehow as a woman, we are to take the many pieces of our life and create harmony to make it beautiful.

Life is like a garden. It takes wisdom. It takes work, hard work. Some days will be good. Some days will be bad. But you press on. You work at it. You find out more of who God created you to be and you do that… until you learn to be that.

If you look at women who created a destiny and a legacy in history – they worked their butts off. They raised families. They were involved in communities. They worked. They stood for something.

I forget sometimes that just because something is hard it doesn’t mean something’s wrong. Training your physical body has elements of joy, pain and mostly hard work. Inner beauty is the same, it take intentional hard work. We have to hold onto that and not grow weary of developing inner beauty in this world where so much seems skin deep.

Galations 6:8-10 AMP

“For the one who sows to his flesh [his sinful capacity, his worldliness, his disgraceful impulses] will reap from the flesh ruin and destruction, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not grow weary or become discouraged in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap, if we do not give in.  So then, while we [as individual believers] have the opportunity, let us do good to all people [not only being helpful, but also doing that which promotes their spiritual well-being], and especially [be a blessing]…”

Best~ Autumn