Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Beauty Inside and Out

My friend Laurie loves to ask people questions. She loves to get in groups and make everyone go around and answer questions. When we went on a girls trip recently - she made all of us go around and say "What was our favorite body part?" Now I'm sure we could all rattle off things we hated about ourselves but it's hard to come up with one thing we like. If you named to me 10 of my friends - I could tell you what each of their best traits are - both inside and outside. But for myself? And I know I'm not alone - I know we all struggle with insecurity.

Okay - maybe not all of us - maybe some of you are out there thinking "I love everything about me" and I say Kudos to you. I know there are many of you thinking "I don't love anything". I had to think a while. I knew what it wasn't - it wasn't my chubby legs or my big birthing hips. It wasn't my squinty eyes or my yucky feet. I chose the one thing that I have always liked that each of you have been complimenting me on this week - my arms. I have always had fairly skinny arms and now carrying around a 30 lb baby all day every day has made them pretty toned. But when any of you said - "look at your skinny arms" - all I wanted to reply to you was "yeah - but you should see my thunder thighs" or "you have no idea how much cellulite you aren't seeing".

Why is it so hard to embrace the person God made us? None of us are perfect. But that's the beauty of it.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139:14

And beauty is only skin deep. My mam-ma always told me "pretty is as pretty does" and that is so true. I wonder if I asked you what your best trait was - what would you tell me? Would it be as hard as coming up with an outward feature? It is for me. My spiritual gifts are encouragement and serving. So I guess my best trait would be that I like to serve others or that I try to encourage others.

I think as women we spend so much time tearing each other down and not enough time building one another up. I hope you see the beauty in the women around you and I hope you see the beauty in yourselves.

And I would love to hear your answers.............."what physical attribute about yourself do you like the most? And what is your best character trait?" There are no wrong answers - but I'd love to hear. It's not bragging to recognize what God has given you! :-)

And no - these pictures of Harper have nothing to do with this post - I'm just throwing them in for the grandparents. (Isn't Harper's dress cute? My friend Hillary made it)

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