Alright, ladies, admit it. We’ve all had those days. The ones where we wake up in the morning, feeling pretty good about ourselves, and then, we look in the mirror. And we see it, the red, ominous dot on the center of our face, the zit.
Well my wedding day was one of those days. No amount of airbrushed make up or a side swept bang could cover up the giant blemish marking the most important day of my life.
Everyone told me I’d grow out of it. The oily skin I had when I was younger would give my skin a healthy glow when I grew up… but I turned 22 years old to find myself a grown married woman who still battles the not-so-beautiful marks on my face. Not exactly the skin that Proactive promised me.
I still spend money on face scrubs, more money on name brand lotions for sensitive skin, and even more money on makeup to cover up the zits when those products don’t work. It’s a seemingly hopeless cycle of covering up what’s underneath.
And, it makes me question, what else do I try to cover up? How often do I try to present the best version myself? Am I trying to be someone else rather than being who I truly am?
I wish I could say that someday we’d get over it, that adults do not obsess about their appearance. But anyone who has a grandmother knows that she still spends an hour curling her hair and applying lipstick for the morning church service. Women want to be beautiful.
And the glossy magazine covers don’t help. We thumb through page after page of long legs, thin torsos, and sun-kissed skin as we wait for our spot in the grocery line, wishing we looked like someone else. Teenagers want to look like Sarah Hyland, middle age women want Jennifer Aniston’s body, senior citizens want Meryl Streep’s timeless beauty, and almost every woman envies Beyonce’s curves.
But the perfect images we see give us a delusional version of reality. I wouldn’t call those images “fake”. But I wouldn’t call them “real” either. After all, the photoshopped photos of Kim Kardashian are, in fact, Kim Kardashian. But it’s not really her. It’s not really real. It’s not down to earth, authentic, genuine.
I bet even the stars wish they looked like the pictures they see of themselves. Cindy Crawford, an ‘80s actress, is famously quoted as saying “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.”
So ask yourself. Do you care more about being picture perfect? Or showing this world who YOU truly are?
I know what God would want. He created you. Not the airbrushed, filtered version of yourself. He created the real, down to earth, authentic, genuine you.
Psalms 139:14 says, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Now, don’t get ahead of yourself. It seems that the counter cultural reaction to all of the Botox injections and fake baked skin would be a complete rejection of everything and anything that enhances our beauty.
But Paul’s warning in 1 Timothy 2:9-10 against women with braided hair and jewelry was never meant to discourage women from being beautiful, it was meant to discourage women from being a distraction.
It isn’t wrong for me to enhance my God given beauty, wear make-up or cover up my zits in the morning. In fact, I recommend it. But it’s wrong if those things become a distraction. When I become dependent on my appearance for my confidence then I’ve neglected one of the first truths that God’s Word revealed about human beings in the very first chapter of Genesis.
We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
Our identity isn’t in our appearance. It is in Him. When we find our confidence in what we look like, we freak out. Because, no matter how pretty you are or how pretty you think that you are, it’s inevitable that you’re going to have one of “those” days. If we find our confidence in what we look like, we’ll be disappointed.
But, when we find our confidence in who God is, we’ll never be disappointed. If we realize that his plan for our life is bigger than a bad hair day or a zit on our face, we don’t have to freak out over our outward appearance.
Even on a day as important as your wedding day, you can look at the big picture and realize that something as insignificant as a zit doesn’t matter at all. I confidently marched down that wedding aisle toward the man that I loved, knowing he would love me the same.
This is the type of security and confidence we find in Christ. Because the truth is, you are more than your weight. You are more than your popularity. You are more than your beauty. You are His.
