Potentially Beautiful

My assignment these past two weeks, if I understood correctly, was to find the beauty in the world around me and apply it to myself. My instruction was to keep the scale out of sight, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to step on it. I must wrap my mind around the truth that beauty has nothing to do with weight.

This all started because I desire to be close to my husband. Among other obstacles, I struggle with the fear that he sees me as I see myself. Since not allowing him to see me has hurt my marriage, I must change the way I see myself. I must let God transform and redefine beauty and then find it in myself.

I’ve made so much progress in these past months… I’ve come to acknowledge things that I can change – that need to change. And I’ve accepted what I can’t and moved forward. It’s been a while since I’ve woken up in tears and gone to bed in despair. The heaviness of the pain of grief has lifted. There has been the healing and restoration that I longed for in my relationship with Tommy’s family. And I’ve been given discernment where boundaries in some other relationships need to be made. And through it all, I’m given plenty of opportunity to exercise using my emotions as indicators rather than allowing them to lead me off a cliff… which is almost always a challenge when triggered. There is no question in any part of me that God has me right where I need to be. This is the place where I can grow… in a place of change and discovery.

But this assignment has led me to the realization of how very distorted my perception of beauty has been in relation to myself. I have had been so dependent on others to tell me how I should feel and what I should think about myself and the world around me, and don’t know if I ever learned to develop my own thoughts and feelings. Now, I know I must align my perception of beauty with God’s… So far, this has meant making some changes.

I found it increasingly difficult to change how I see, so I resolved that maybe I need to change what I see. One of the things I know about myself is how affected I am by my environment. My house has never really been made into a home. Not in any way that would reflect the creativity I know God put in me. There was no beauty in anything I saw… except in the potential that finally began to unfold in these past two weeks. Not just in the broken hand-me-down furniture, half-painted walls and unfinished projects…but in myself and my capabilities to create a vision. I began to see my part in the restoration and renewal of the home I wanted to provide for my family. I began to experience the strength to meet that role.

And so I began… 

It was work. Hard work. Every part of my body hurts. But something happened…

I saw beauty… not in the freshly painted walls or brand-new furniture, but in my own potential. I felt at home in my own house in a way that I had never felt before. I saw beauty in the vision… a family finding their place in the world. A homemaker finding herself. Friends to be served and loved on. I saw it. 

I know that I’m so far from where I need to be… but in such a short time, I’ve already moved farther than I ever thought I could.