My Beautiful Core

This week I've been extremely disheartened. I feel like I keep searching and praying about an opportunity that will give me answers and lead my heart a certain direction. But what am I hearing instead? NADDA! I was watching Eat, Pray, Love today and got extremely excited about our trip to Italy and Greece next October. I've always wanted to travel in my life and for some reason I've gotten so side tracked away from that. I spent my whole life living under such strict rules that I feel weird now having all this freedom. I can paint my nails whatever color I want, I can eat whatever I want, I can garden whatever I want, I can go/do/think/believe anything! So why do I feel so stuck?

There is this amazing woman living in my complex that I have had the great privilege to get to know over the course of the past year or so. She is extremely gifted in writing woman's devotionals and I can't wait to work with her on bringing a woman's Bible study to our apartment complex. This week on her blog, she challenged women everywhere to shed their makeup and then asked the following questions, that I LOVE:

1. If you participated in our intro Tuesday (yes that means we are doing it again next Tuesday) of Redefining Beautiful today, share with us what that experience was like. How did you feel when you looked in the mirror before walking out the door? Did people notice? Did it cause you to focus more on your inside beauty today? If so, how so?
~It's interesting that this was the challenge in order to help woman kind see how much time is actually spent on noticing their beauty. I actually tend to have the opposite problem. I do not spend longer than ten minutes getting dressed, brushing teeth, pulling hair back. I haven't worn make-up in months, and I rarely look in the mirror. When I look in the mirror and take the time to notice myself I see someone who doesn't care about how they look and I feel tired. Working four jobs and oversleeping some days and becoming sleep deprived the next. My body is exhausted and telling me to slow down. Either I have too much energy or not enough. Either I eat extremely healthy, or not at all. I'm living in extremes. I've been ignoring my inner beauty because it's easier to take care of my clients, husband, family, friends than to focus on myself. To focus on me seems so selfish. But it's not just me that I ignore sometimes, It's my Father. God takes a back burner too some days when I sleep in and miss church because I worked for a coworker overnight Saturday. I'm so busy helping the hurting that I forget to ask God to replenish me, and help me feel beautiful when I can't stand to think about it.
2. What do you see when you look into the mirror and deep past those eyes? Negatives and positives encouraged!
Once again all I can see is exhaustion. Ultimately it reminds me of a time about seven years ago. I had just celebrated my 18th birthday and was in the bathroom of a friends house at a party. I was so completely drunk that all I could do was stare at my eyes in the mirror. I kept asking myself...who's in there? Who are you? What are you doing? And my answer was empty. I felt nothing, just complete numbness. It was the first time I had dared look at myself, deep into my eyes and saw nothing. Just a whole that longed to be filled. Of course the story does get better, I ended up meeting my husband a few months after that, made a commitment to get sober and ultimately accepted Christ into my heart and changed my life. It wasn't easy to start a new life, to begin realizing that I had beauty. Now when I look deep into my eyes I feel love. It isn't even really coming just from me it's from all the people in my life, it's from God, and it's from me. But without that missing component of accepting God's love I wouldn't have felt it. So even though I see an exhausted version of that...I still see the glimmer of light and love that God radiates through me.
3. What things are really difficult to love about your inside and why?
I think it all comes down to acceptance. To love yourself is to accept yourself regardless. This is what makes a marriage so difficult in my opinion. It's that acceptance and love you trust in someone else. The same is true for yourself. In a sense we are our own worst enemy. We are the only one's that can make the decision to forgive ourselves for our sins and love every gift that God has blessed us with, including the gift of ourselves.
4. What things do you love about your new inside? What beauty do you see on the inside? Can you think of something in your "heart" that has really flourished since you began your Christian faith walk?
Love. Love. Love. I never knew love like I now know love. So I love that I can love now in a trusting way that gives faith and shows kindness. Through this love I feel and give I can serve others, be kind to those that hurt me, and bring others to know a love that I know so well. To think back to the drunk girl who had spent so many hours hurting herself in countless ways I realize that that girl had no idea what love was. That girl had never felt loved and was seeking love in so many harmful ways. God built us to love and once I truly felt that from him, I was able to show it to others. This love is what allows me to see the good in myself: caring, compassion, loving, honest, gracious, empathetic, creative, intelligent, sensitive, humorous...the list continues.
5. Do you believe your self-worth in Christ is invaluable? If so, how are you doing in the area of your day to day life reflecting that invaluable self-worth?
I'm keeping this one simple. There have been days in my life where I was so worn down I couldn't love myself and I had to trust that he was there doing enough loving for me that I could rely on him to lead me to self-love. Being able to trust in Christ to provide his unconditional love, it's a love that we don't feel from anything else in this world. So even when I let myself down and slip into a low self-worth day, He is there redirecting me to see the truth.
6. This post contains a lot of contradictions (life is full of them) and things I could expand for pages on (aren't you glad I spared you?!) so what things are difficult to grasp? On what things would you challenge me? On what ideas do you need further clarification and expansion?
None...I loved it :)