Dear Woman of God...Free Yourself from the Burden of Being Beautiful

As I scrolled through social media, images of beautiful women stared back at me. Women of different shades and cultural backgrounds. Women celebrating various shapes and sizes. Each having a unique style that illustrated their colorful personalities. Cameras, lighting, filters and angles were all on their A-game; showcasing the very best of these women. In the stillness of the image, they were flawlessly beautiful, a sight to behold.

Normally, I'd casually scroll through such images. But suddenly, I found myself stopping at each one, looking beyond the persona each woman wanted to portray and wondering what they truly wanted to caption. One image struck a cord with me. A side-by-side of a woman claiming to go from "basic" to glam. The left side of the image featured her natural face void of makeup. The right side featured her glamour face. Oh, how people praised the "glamorous" side! But none of this bothered me as much as the comments stating, "Wow! you're ugly without makeup."

That night, as I climbed into bed, I heard God speak to my heart. “Free yourself from the burden of being beautiful,” He said. “From the even bigger burden of being sexy.”

I marinated on the admonishment, thinking of all the ways in which beauty had become a burden to women. How it has become something we must always strive for, rather than something we naturally exude. How it dangles right in front of us, yet no one can ever fully grasp it. Ever! No matter how many "improvements" we make on our outer appearance, the world will continue to point at our flaws and say, “you need to fix that.”

Unattainable beauty standards aren’t just a problem for makeup lovers, as women who are pro natural-beauty still feel the weight of overcompensating in other areas of their life. I’ve seen these women obsess over their weight, wardrobe, shoes, and hair. No one is exempt!

I love that women of today are becoming CEOs, executives, politicians, and so much more! But how much more of a #boss would we be if we didn’t feel pressured to buy high end makeup and cosmetics? Contraptions to make our waist look smaller and bust look larger? How much more money would we save if we stopped purchasing $2000 handbags in an effort to keep up with our circle of friends? Yes, we can afford it. But not every permissible thing is beneficial.

I’m not against these things. I’m simply posing a question. One that asks, how much more liberated would we feel if we detached ourselves from caring about what the world thinks about us? Whether people find us attractive, appealing, sexy, or enviable? And how much better off would we be if we invested as much time into beautifying our hearts, minds, and souls, as we do money into beautifying our faces.

The word of God tells us “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Therefore, we must abandon the notion that we need “help” being beautiful, and subscribe to the notion that we are God’s “workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10). We were created in His image, therefore we are good enough as we are!

I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say there were mornings when I put more effort into my hair, makeup and wardrobe than I did connecting with God. Days when I invested more money in material things that make my exterior “beautiful,” than I invested time in meditating on the word of God that makes my heart beautiful.

No, it’s not a crime to desire physical beauty. Nor is beautifying oneself a crime. You’ll see in the story of Esther that makeup and cosmetics are nothing new. But, women are reminded that beauty should not come from outward adornment, but the inner self, “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight" (1 Peter 3:3-4).

If you are not a woman of God, I probably lost you in this post a long time ago. I'm not mad, though. May the Lord bless you! But to my sisters in Christ, it's time we start making beautifying ourselves from within a higher priority than physical beauty.

The more we follow Gods standards, the more we free ourselves from the burden of the world’s standards, which demands we chase after physical beauty. The standard that tells us to hide the flaws that truly make us beautiful by caking on, contouring, highlighting, tanning, bleaching, gluing, buffing, mattifying, glossing, cinching, padding, snapping, falsifying, staging, editing, and whatever else we do to prove to ourselves—and the world—that we are beautiful.

May the Lord bless you, and may you find peace in his Word. Amen.

#women #God #beautystandards #beautiful #burden #free