Living In our Flaws

      My friend tells the story of how as a young person, she struggled with acne, not an uncommon scenario for many teens.  Still every morning she was careful to cover the imperfections and flaws because she worried their view would repulse whomever she spoke with.  She prayed for years that God would remove the blemishes, what she considered ‘defects’ because she wanted people to like her and could only see herself through the lenses of other’s scrutiny.

Unfortunately, my friend is not alone in her ‘almost obsession’ of dealing with acne.  Our culture is so riveted on looking just like the ‘made up, icon beauties’ on TV, they can’t accept that not everyone is not perfect.  And that’s part of the point.  Those ‘beauties’ on TV have make up artists that remove the tiniest ‘blip’ that shows up on their skin before they set foot in front of a TV camera.  This sets the ‘beauty’ access line in our young girls minds, at a very high standard, and it’s false!

These feelings of inadequacies create anxiety in our children.  They must feel like the lepers in the Bible must have felt.  They had spots on their skin and were excommunicated; they were unclean and could not be with their family and friends on any local level.  These young girls in today’s world can be traumatized and become unable to communicate with kids their own age in a face to face world.  So they hide out in their rooms and only socialize over the internet, which can create it’s own cruel and dangerous world!

As my friend mentioned above, she grew in her faith, and her prayers changed, even though the condition did not seem to get any better.  Instead of asking for a ‘glowing complexion', she began asking God to help her believe that He loved her just the way he created her.  God’s standards of perfection and beauty are considerably different than any culture around the globe!

He is not about being popular in our little cliques with those people we would like to hang out with.  God is about what we have in our heart.  Our exterior appearance has nothing to do with our heart, if we are a Believer.  Our challenge is to focus on Him rather than on what the world around us chooses to see as important.  

The old adage, ‘beauty is only skin deep,’ is true.  Over time we all change.  We get older every day and we eat foods that aren’t good for us, which also can change how we look.  Many take drugs or smoke cigarettes, both of which affects our outward beauty, as well as other health habits and even our DNA and genetics!  

For those young ladies (and young men) who don’t know Jesus, their struggle is staggering.  They want so badly to become ‘liked’ because of (or in spite of) how they look,  they resort to using all kinds of creams and medicine, sometimes surgeries to create what they believe will outwardly make them acceptable and perhaps even beautiful to those around them.

God doesn’t look for the most beautiful person on the outside, like our world does. Rather he looks for the person with the right heart for his purpose and calling; and this is where blessings from the Sovereign God start! He loves us just as he created us.  Therefore we no longer need to 'live in our flaws' and be defined by the skewed beauty definition, so prevalent in our world!  

Photo Credit:  free inadequacy pictures