I want to be beautiful… truly beautiful

There are songs about it. It’s what makes cosmetics a multi-million dollar a year business. It’s why we often glance in windows to see if we can catch our reflection.

We all want to be beautiful. And what’s more, we want people to see us as beautiful.

Now, I can really only speak to the ladies here. Guys, I haven’t the slightest idea what your hearts’ deep desires are, though I would assume they have something to do with being gruff, driving big trucks and loving beautiful women (or hopefully one woman). But for you ladies, I KNOW you. Even if you deny it, I believe deep down we all desire to be found beautiful. If not, go ahead and tell me you don’t pick the picture that captures you in the “best light” for your facebook profile pic. Tell me you don’t pick a shirt off the rack at Dillard’s with the hopes that it sets you apart and accentuates your beauty. Tell me you don’t suck your tummy in and stand a bit taller when the camera man says cheese.

Yeah, girl. We all do. We want to be beautiful.

But everyday I’m reminded that our beauty is not “skin deep.” Each time I see the girl staring back at me in the bathroom mirror and think she could sure do with just a little bit better skin and a little bit poofier hair, I recall what God says about me and how He made me.

He says I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). He says he planned out how I would be- inside and out- before my daddy ever even picked out my name (Psalm 139:15). He says I am made in His image (Genesis 1:27). He says He knows how many hairs are on my head (Matthew 10:30). ….(So, I guess he does a recount every morning after I yank the brush through my tangly shower hair!)

I find that so refreshing. The God of this whole universe– the One who flung the stars in the sky and the One who paints the sunset that I cannot turn my eyes from at 7 p.m.–HE, made me and HE thinks I’m beautiful.

And just like a cheesy infomercial, it just keeps getting better.

He says it’s not what’s on my outside that makes me beautiful.

He says that “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart” (I Samuel 16:7). (I know I’m at least glad for that at 3 a.m. on Monday morning when I have to get up to go to work.)

But the best part is, even though He sees me as beautiful and created me just how He planned, He’s given us instructions on how to get even more beautiful. It’s like God’s rendition of a glamour magazine’s front cover tease to “Be more stunning in 3 easy steps.”

He says our beauty should not come from outward adornments (jewelry, hairstyles, expensive make-up…), but from “your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (I Peter 3:4).

So is it wrong to fix yourself up? No, I don’t believe it is. And girl, I am ALL about some hairspray and some long wear make-up. But is it wrong for us to think that’s what gives us beauty– and unfading beauty, at that? I think it is.

A truly beautiful woman is kind and loving and puts other people before herself. (Yep, even boyfriends, husbands and children who are driving her up the WALL. Actually, especially them.) She is graceful in what she says and respectful in what she does. She doesn’t complain all the time (even when her mascara ran and then her panty-hose did too). She isn’t the one putting-up-with and adding-to the gossip in the office. She isn’t cutting people off in traffic – on the interstate OR in the Wal-Mart check out line.

Girls, that is what God says true beauty is. The kind that will attract a man worth keeping. The kind that isn’t going to fade with age but grow and grow and grow. The only kind I want.

Don’t you want to be truly beautiful?