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True Beauty: Beauty and Worth in the Midst of Feeling Anything But Beautiful and Worthy

During fresh grief, beautiful was not a word I would grab from thin air and proudly wear. My body decided to break out all over, basically wreaking havoc on the outsides to meet my already havocked insides. Just boo. I felt exist-y. But beautiful? Far from it. God used my husband, Bryan, to teach me about true beauty. When he looked past the facade, peered into my heart and said, “I want you to know that even though you don’t feel beautiful right now, God wants me to tell you that you are. You are so beautiful.” Something eternal and sacred rooted inside.

We all need inner beauty therapy in whatever form it comes. We all need God to use others to genuinely remind us that we are seen and found worthy and beautiful in their eyes and His. You know who needs to hear, “You are beautiful?” Insecure teenagers and new parents and teachers loving on kids day after day. Your neighbor and those in the fresh fog of grief ought to hear that they are unbelievably beautiful. We need to look into women’s eyes—women who are fighting cancer, who are widows, who are exhausted from the rat race, who believe they need to look like the window dressings in the mall—and we need to point within and whisper, “Beauty is only skin deep. But true beauty, that comes from the Father.”

True beauty is letting God be strong when you feel done. Beauty is smiling even when your heart hurts. Beauty is trusting that your worth is solidified in a God of grace who knows your thoughts and fears and sees you giving your best today and wraps you in His embrace and shines a light on your face and declares, “You. ARE. Beautiful.”