Confident Moms, Confident Daughters By Maria FurloughSýnishorn

Day Five: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Scripture: 1 Peter 3:3-4, Psalm 139:13-14, Romans 12:2

Ladies, we will never be perfect, and neither will our daughters. And no matter what we do, say, eat, crunch, or tuck, we will never become beautiful enough to fix our confidence problem. There will always be someone prettier. Our only hope is healing from the inside out.

I realize this is uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable for me too. I remember a place and time that whenever I saw physical beauty I wanted to cry. I would even size up my friends and mentally decide if I were better off or worse off than they were. It was a terrible way to live. I felt the weight of it constantly—that my physical beauty would never be good enough to make me feel good enough. I imagine that your daughter could be living in a similar place.

But there is a different place for our minds to live. I’ve found this place. Through God’s Word, His Holy Spirit, and a big dose of miraculous reality, I live there now. My prayer is that you will live there too. But we have a hard shell to crack through, don’t we? We must retrain our minds to think differently so that our words and our actions reflect this new place we live in.

I want to give you a picture. Imagine a sunrise that fills the sky with the most beautiful colors you have ever seen. Pinks, oranges, yellows. This sunset is gorgeous. Its image may even take your breath away. It’s heaven come to earth. 

My dear, did you also desire to become the sun? Downcast, did your shoulders droop in sadness that you will never bear the colors of the sky? Heavens no! Why would you? You were not created to be the sun.

Neither, then, are you created to be someone else. You alone reflect God’s distinctive choice in creating a masterpiece. The colors we bear are ours alone—our curves, our parts, our imperfections, and our gloriousness belong only to us. Why do we spend a lifetime trying to change the unique sunrise that God has created in us or reset the colors He chose to paint in us? Our self-acceptance allows our daughters to more fully receive the one-of-a-kind beauty that God marks them with. 

Can the physical beauty God has given you be enough? Why or why not?