There was nothing but darkness, and out of the darkness, He had a vision of you. A glimmer of light. He smiled. And the more He thought of you, the brighter the light became. You were not a quick thought, but an elaborate plan. His heart burst with hope, His excitement began to rise as he dreamed about who you would be. He planned out every detail about you. The way your hair would fall, the precious color it would be. Every beauty mark and freckle, the color of your eyes. How big your smile would be, the sound of your laugh. He knitted a story with every fiber of your being. He planted tiny seeds of passion in your heart. He knew exactly how long you could tolerate being around a mass of people. He knew how loud your voice would get when you were excited. He knew that you wouldn’t like change, or that you would get bored easily. Then He breathed His very life into you When He saw the finished product His mouth dropped, He was stunned by your beauty. The creator of the world was in awe of you. His heart treasured you so dearly. He embraced you in his arms and joy welled up within him.
But then a lie began to whisper, that something was wrong with you. It convinced you that you were supposed to look like someone else, laugh like someone else, have passions like someone else. Every time you looked in the mirror you were filled with hate for what you saw. Every time someone confided in you their passions, you coveted them. You became so consumed with what other people were doing, what their lives looked like, what their jobs looked like, what their bodies looked like, what their dreams looked like, that you couldn’t see yourself anymore. You lost yourself in the dark chaos of comparison. You started believing that every bad thing that had happened to you was a result of your imperfections. That if you had been prettier, funnier, smarter, more lovable, more talented, people would have valued you, wanted you, protected you, believed in you, provided for you, or loved you.
Every time you did, God’s heart winced with pain. You came straight from His very heart. He created you to reflect a part of Him only you could. When the lies distorted who you were, they distorted who He was. He loves what He created. He adores the person you are. His heart longs to be with you so much that the God of the universe, the King of creation, became a vulnerable man, and subjected himself to suffering, all so He could be with you, so He could understand the pain you feel, the very life you live.
You are beautiful. You are not the things that have happened to you. You are not imperfect in the eyes of God. He sees the fullness of who he created you to be. You will not be beautiful when you lose 20 pounds. You will not be beautiful when put on more makeup. You will not be beautiful when your acne clears. You will not be beautiful when someone finally tells you that you are. You already are beautiful, but you will never feel beautiful until you believe that. Your beauty does not depend on a circumstance. Your beauty is eternal, because He is eternal, and your beauty is rooted in Him.
There is rest when you realize you don’t have to strive to feel beautiful. When you realize your very design was intentional. Can you want to lose weight? Yes, but if you can’t look at yourself in the mirror now with grace and love, no weight loss (or whatever it is for you) will satisfy you. Those same hateful eyes will continue to look at your body, your job, your life, with scorn. Or maybe you are happy, but your happiness with yourself is rooted in a circumstance, and when that circumstance changes you go back to being unsatisfied and hateful towards yourself.
I want you to know that you’re beautiful. That you are dearly loved by God because he created you. He knows you. He knows the deepest parts of you, and He loves you. He chooses you. Over and over again he chooses you.
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