My Daughter is Beautiful

Tell her she's beautiful every day. 

Don't tell her she's beautiful. 

Be honest with her. 

Compliment her mind, not her body. 

Don't talk about her body at all. 

Tell her she looks good even if she doesn't. 

AH!!  PLEASE!! SOMEONE STOP THE MADNESS!!!! 

First off, I have always struggled with my self-image. This is me, self-proclaimed original "Ugly Betty"... I think I was maybe around fourteen years old. 

I had bad acne, was overweight (I weighed as much as a teenager as I did pregnant with my third child...), braces, headgear, etc. The complete antithesis of cultural, feminine beauty. 

I wasn't pretty. No one told me I was pretty, but no one said I was ugly either, aside from one nasty kid at a pool a few years prior to this picture being taken. 

My mom told me that God doesn't make junk. That stuck with me.

Other than that no one made a big deal about how I looked, one way or the other. 

Consequently, my own self-talk, in my mind, was validated. 

"I'm ugly."

Fast forward. 

This is my daughter after a Father/Daughter dance. 

She is beautiful. 

I will always tell her that she is beautiful. 

I know the trend right now is to not talk to your daughter at all about her physical appearance, but rather to compliment her mind and heart and soul. 

I get that. 

But she wants to know she is beautiful. It is innate in her. Even when she was really little, she would ask me to put a dress on her, or she would grab one of my dresses and say, "Am I pwetty, mama?" 

"Yes, honey. You are beautiful." 

When I tell her she is beautiful, I want her to know that I say that from a place of deep love for her. When she hears someone else say she is beautiful, she will be able to recognize the difference between someone who says it out of love, and someone who says it without love - someone who wants to use her. 

She will know that she is beautiful, not sexy. 

She will know that she is beautiful because she is fearfully and wonderfully made, knit in her mother's womb, beloved, His beautiful one. (All Scripture references)

Of course, she is not limited by physical beauty. We affirm her for being kind, compassionate, brave, intelligent, prayerful, and helpful. But all of those things make her beautiful. 

To only affirm her heart, mind, and soul while rejecting her body as unimportant to who she is is really the opposite of anything holy - if the body were bad and not worth a second thought, it wouldn't have been redeemed on the cross. If the body were bad, it wouldn't be resurrected on the last day. 

I believe I should instead, teach her to love herself as a whole person. Society places so much emphasis on sex appeal, not beauty. We have to be careful when we are fighting one, to not fight the other. When she starts to change or gains a few pounds, or needs braces, etc, I want her to know she is beautiful because she is a child of God and His love for her makes her beautiful and that is unchanging beauty. 

I hope to teach her that her most attractive quality is her soul, and that holiness is the most beautiful thing in the world. 

I want to teach her that the more she is full of love, the more beautiful she is. 

They will see her beauty. Not just physical beauty, but the love of Christ radiating through her, spilling over to everyone around her. 

So, I say without reservation....

My daughter is beautiful. 

She is Beautiful

My husband and I have wrapped up a few weeks of local speaking engagements and Q&A sessions on all things regarding teens' ideas of sex, dating, and relationships. It has been interesting on many levels. I realized how little I knew about any of the aforementioned topics when I was their age and I realized that relationships and maintaining purity in those relationships is the struggle that is on their minds and the battleground of their hearts - a battleground upon which an all out war is being waged.

I am not blogging tonight to discuss all of the topics that came up in our time listening and learning about these beautiful young people. Though there were many areas for celebration and many areas of heartbreak. I am blogging tonight about giving glory to God for beauty. Every sexual sin is a distortion of God's created beauty. Let's dissect a few...

1) Pornography.

Even though porn is becoming a woman's addiction too, I am going to address it from the more common occurrence of the male addiction. Porn is the number one common thread behind all molesters, predators, cheaters... and yet it is also abused by people we know and love in our homes, schools, church communities, places of business, etc. It's seen as harmless entertainment initially. It is seen as "no one's business." It is even seen as a sign of healthy sexual development.

But that "healthy sexual development" soon takes a nasty turn as it becomes addiction, consuming the consumer. It leads to isolation, withdrawing into oneself, a distorted view of women - seeing them as objects, not God's beauty.

If God created woman last, that she would be the crown of all creation - the most beautiful created thing in the world... her appearance in pornography would be akin to Van Gogh's "Starry Night" as the background of a dart board, in the basement cellar of a rundown liquor store. A porn film for a woman, just as the dart board in a basement cellar of a rundown liquor store, is no appropriate place for that kind of beauty.

In porn the focus is not on the woman's beauty. She becomes the subject, the object, for whatever actions may be put upon her. She lowers her own dignity to engage in acts at the will of her directors. She is not admired. She is not honored. She is not treasured. Her beauty is long forgotten in a whirlwind of the sexual desire which should have gone hand in hand with the passion from a man who promises before God to love her forever.

When a man sees a woman as crown of creation - when he sees her as God created her to be- he will seek to protect that beauty with his very life.

2) Sex outside of Marriage

In Scripture, the adulterous woman is scorned. Women hate her. Men see her as undignified, a sinner, and an object of their own lusts. Jesus reaches out to her, even despite the scandal it may cause Him to associate with her. Why? Because He sees her beauty and how her beauty has been abused and forsaken. She tries to tell Jesus that she doesn't have any husband, and Jesus, in the Scripture's most amazing case of quick wit, tells her... You're right! You've had five and the one you are with now isn't your husband! This Samaritan woman receives the living water of the Lord and does not go back to her old ways. She now realizes that she has something worth protecting.

When we as women give ourselves away whether it be sex or just dressing as to leave little to the imagination, we are saying with our bodies that what we have isn't beauty to be honored, but sexy to be taken. We don't demand that our men fight for us. We don't challenge them on to holiness. It is like taking our most prized possession and freely giving it away to empty promises or unfulfilled commitments.

Miley Cyrus gave an interview where she said that she behaves the way she does because she is comfortable in her sexuality. If you gave your brand new car to a guy you didn't even know and told him he could do whatever he wanted with it, people would not say that you are "comfortable" with loaning out your car. They would say that you must not care very much about that car. What we value, we protect. It says a lot about us if we value ourselves and our bodies by what we do with it - if we value it, we protect it. We dress modestly. We give it to the person who we love, who has earned it by his love and it is a mutual gift in marriage- not one-sided, "I give, you get", intended until death does us part.

3) Jealousy

This isn't technically a sexual sin, but the thing many of us struggle day to day with is to overcome is jealousy relating to beauty and sexuality. We are jealous of her body or his body or her boyfriend or his girlfriend. We want what they have. We want their personality, we want their circumstance, we compare and put down the gifts we have been given.

I used to be really jealous. I was jealous of my younger siblings for the attention they got and the looser restrictions they had (I'm the oldest!) and I was jealous of my beautiful relatives and friends. I was jealous of other women's bodies in particular, always comparing myself. I was jealous of other people's musical successes, their voices/monetary success.

I finally was able to have a real conversion from this when I started thanking God that the person I was jealous of had an amazing gift. I thanked God for my friend's beauty. I thanked God for my friend's successes. I thanked God and thus began a pattern of seeking beauty. I always tell my daughter she is beautiful - because I want it to be so ingrained that it becomes a matter of truth, not a matter of opinion. Once, we were at a restaurant and the waitress came to take our order. As she walked away, my three year old son said, "Mama, she is beautiful." I praised God right then and there that he always seeks beauty and not only that - says it out loud. I am thankful that I married a man who has a special gift to see beauty - he seeks holiness, which is true beauty! He seeks Christ in others, which is true beauty! I never worry when a physically attractive woman enters our lives, because he has made a habit of seeking true beauty and I have made a habit of seeking true beauty and we BOTH have made a habit of thanking God for this beauty.

You are beautiful. She is beautiful. I am beautiful.

I truly believe that if we could all start thanking God for the beautiful things and beautiful people we see, we will begin to be repulsed when we see abuses of that beauty, especially in regards to sexual sin. I believe women will begin to guard that beauty and give thanks to God for their fellow woman's beauty causing us women to support each other rather than turn into jealous, bitter ladies. I believe men will begin to fight for that beauty and defend women from another who would use that beauty for him or herself.

And....I believe...

the world will be a more beautiful place.