I am not a crier.  Sometimes I wish I were a little more emotional, but it’s not my personality.  Either that or it’s some bizarre learned behavior.  Either way, it takes a lot to tear me up, but there are a few things that always get to me: footage of Challenger’s final launch, “Amazing Grace,” videos of little children welcoming their soldier parents home…  And this song:

I’ve blogged about it before, but in a different vein.  There’s a different, way more personal aspect on my heart tonight.  I’m being deliberately vague here, but there was a point in my formative years when someone repeatedly used the word “ugly” toward me.  Around that time, a perfect storm of negative reinforcement from several different directions kicked in.  Now that I’m older and have the benefit of hindsight, I know the timing wasn’t coincidental.  Satan, after all, loves to steal and kill and destroy, and he pulled out all the stops with me over the course of that season in my life.  After that, I was never a fan of the word “beautiful,” because I wasn’t.  It didn’t matter how many people told me different, I never could believe them.  Even today, as a grown woman who knows better, those un-beautiful moments creep up. Do I think I’m special in that thought?  Nope.  It’s a deeply held belief of mine that “unbeautiful” is one of Satan’s favorite lies to women (and maybe to some men as well).

Then comes that moment when this song comes on and God pours “love song” all over me.  He does that sometimes.  He is the lover of my soul, and sometimes, he lavishes that love all over me in ways that blow my mind.  Want to know what He said to me tonight?  There was never, ever a moment in my life when I was not beautiful to Him.  When He looked at me at my lowest points and at the points when thought I was the ugliest, He called me beautiful.  If I had been still and listened to Him, He would have told me so.  He’s not just making my life beautiful, He’s called me so all along.  Beautiful because I am made in His image. Beautiful because He loves me.  Beautiful because I am His.

And yet, my heart breaks.  I love teaching middle schoolers partially because I remember being a middle schooler.  It seems like that doubt of who we are and of our loveliness hits a peak somewhere around eighth grade.  My girls, the ones who walk into my classroom every day, are positively gorgeous, and yet I had one cry in my arms one day, sobbing, “I don’t feel beautiful.”  Oh, that I could open their hearts and pour in what it took me decades to learn, that if they listen, they will hear Him tell them just how beautiful they are.

How do I know they are beautiful?  Their hearts are amazing.  I shared my testimony with them a while back.  We talked about beauty, about how nasty that “ugly” lie can be, about how they are beautiful.  Two days later, I walked into a classroom plastered with signs:   “We love you.”  “You’re amazing.”  “You’re beautiful.” Actually?  They are beautiful.  If only they could see that.

If I could leave one thing with my girls (and my guys probably need to hear it too), it would be that magazines, TV shows, movies, other people’s visions of what is pretty don’t mean a thing.  Honestly, there is no such thing as a standard for beauty.  If you are truly you, the way God made you to be, you are beautiful.

-JB