Humor me. I want to talk about beauty. Again. And...I want to start out by quoting just a small piece of a pathetically sorry little ditty I wrote back in college entitled "Ode to Love Handles."
Here's a chunk of the silly thing:
"These handles are the essence of love
Not melting away when push comes to shove
Wear them with pride and joy but beware
Too much revealed and they all want to stare
Don't be a fool and diet like mad
Those handles are yours, you should be glad!
The way they love is too much to take
To keep them around, just feed them some cake."
Ok. I promise....absolutely PROMISE you...I am not proud of that poem. It just came to mind as fitting for what I'm about to write about.
I am a mom. This happened quite quickly. Three months after marriage I got pregnant and 9 months later I have a baby...and 14 months later...I still don't have the body back that I used to have. It was pretty much Boom!... hello, body change. And...everything else change (hair loss, teeth stains, stretch marks, cellulite, skin texture changes, you name it). I know, I know. I can tell myself that I'm doing well, give myself a break, I just had a child, the child is worth it, I have it good, yadda yadda...etc. However, this doesn't help my convoluted self have a less convoluted view of my body and the importance I put on maintaining the "best" body that i can have. The "most" attractive features that I have. Phrases that tell me that beauty is not the do all end all, that it doesn't really matter....don't mean much to me...unless I believe it doesn't matter.
Let me explain.
Beauty is nice. It really is. Of course we want to be attractive, especially for our significant other. I love to dress up for or make myself look nice for my husband, and he in turn, appreciates when I do. However. HowEVER. *ahem* I just want to point something out to myself, since I seem to have such a hard time getting it:
Whatever it is that you caught your husband with, is what you will have to maintain to "keep" your husband. If you caught him by beauty alone, well, you're sunk cus...your beauty is fleeting. fast. Like a mother.
I know for a fact that I did not win my husbands love because of my looks. He was and is attracted to me, yes. That is there. But...he will say so many things before he gets to my beauty when he recounts to me reasons why he loves me. Character qualities such as justice and mercy. Personality traits that he finds endearing. And...life. LIFE and JOY because of Christ IN me. He was drawn to the beauty of all that he saw of Christ working in me. Let me just say, the only good I have in me is Jesus, so thank God that I have him.
In the end, we are all aging. We all will lose our outward beauty. It doesn't matter. Our husbands will eventually lose their beauty too (that is not a vindictive statement, besides they don't seem to care as much anyway, right?).
It. Doesn't. Matter. There will always be more beautiful people around us (and I talk more about that here). But there is only one person, one woman, that can be the "most" beautiful to her husband, and that is you. Me. Why?!? Because we have a relationship with our husbands. We have connection with them...spiritual, physical, and emotional connection! We are their best friend. Their support. Their cheerleader (if you don't mind the cheesy connotation with that word). We can be a picture of grace and forgiveness to them. Challenge them in love. We can be a source of confidence and a safe place to confide. We can be their wife of Character and, if the Lord calls, the mother of their children. We can laugh with them. We can show them how to keep a neat closet (ok, well that might be more for us, hmmm). We can love them to the deepest depth by accepting them for who he is and choosing to honor and respect them. We can nurture them, love them, help them. We can bake them a cake... or something.
In all of these things that we can do, we don't need to have a toned stomach, perfectly sculpted legs or luscious locks of hair. We can come out and start the day in a burlap sack and a cheesy old grin that says "I love my life with you" and our husbands will think we're the hottest thing ever because they are so thrilled that we are full of life and joy and are happy to be with them! ***sidenote, i haven't yet tried the burlap sack thing, but I've been assured that I could wear one if I wanted and still look gooood***
So as to not get too repetitive to previous blog posts, I will end this post with this encouragement:
If you are a mom who found herself all of a sudden (as in BOOM! to be completely dramatic) squeezed into some "other" woman's skin (aka, not what you used to be, aka yo bod-day's goin' to pot), I encourage you to grab hold of being a beautiful person full of life rather than trying to be just a beautiful skin.
Fight to keep what lasts. Fight to love well. Fight to accept grace...grace that says you are more than your lovehandles. Fight by reveling in who you were created to be and rejoicing in the purpose you were given in life . Find delight in the fact that God finds you beautiful because he made you, and you are his child. Cast anchor in God, and your identity in him, and by doing so, you can confidently walk through life as one called "beautiful."
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