Posted by Nicole on April 6, 2014
I DARE YOU TO LOOK.
I dare you to look in the mirror and see beauty; see a face that God loves and made.
God loves your face. You are allowed to love your face too.
There has been a lot written about fasting from mirrors. Good challenges have come from good people to help end our obsession with mirrors and just go throughout our days without looking at ourselves constantly. These challenges can have important freeing effects for us as we try to stop obsessing about our flaws, but the mirror and the looking is NOT the problem. It’s always the motivations behind the actions that matter.
We may fast from mirrors as a way to realign ourselves with the issues inside these bodies – the issues in our souls about worth and narcissism and the tension-filled dance we all move through each day…
We may fast from “looking” at ourselves so that the next time we look, we look with love and acceptance instead of obsession and self-loathing…
But we do not fast from mirrors because looking at ourselves is somehow less holy or less healthy than ignoring our outsides. It is not shallow to love your surface area.
In this culture, where a specific kind of beauty is power, there is nothing more Jesus-like or revolutionary than loving YOUR OWN face, no matter how it compares to anyone else’s. This is the upside down kingdom of God – where everyone is beautiful, even you. (Even if you don’t believe in God, trusting in the abundance and beauty of all people is powerful.}
Looking at your own face as a spiritual practice is a powerful rebellion.
I dare you to look in the mirror and LOVE your face.
Love your face, not because it can get you things or make you feel powerful (which is narcissism) but because it was made well.
I dare you to look in the mirror, not to fix yourself but to appreciate the glory of God’s creation. Looking at ourselves can be a distraction or it can be like a prayer of THANKS.
When it is not narcissism but gratitude that brings us to look in a mirror or take a picture, I believe we will have figured out a major riddle in life.
You are allowed to like the face you’ve been given.
You can be pretty sure that God wanted you to have your face… why would you ignore something beautiful that God has given you?
This may take work. This may feel harder than just ignoring your face. This may take redefining what “beautiful” means for you. It is hard to hold an opinion that someone else doesn’t agree with. It is hard to believe we are “good looking” when we feel other people disagree with us. But you are “good looking” and the only opinion that matters is your own and that of your creator.
If you love Jesus, You can look to Him and serve other people WHILE liking the body God gave you. You can love your family and be beautiful on the inside WHILE believing in the goodness of all creation, including your own body.
This actually helps us love other people better too. I no longer let the beauty of another person intimidate me or make me treat them any differently than anyone else. I no longer hide because I am having a “bad hair day” or a “fat day.” I can live freely and bravely everyday in the assurance that I am beautiful and made well. Then, I extend that same acceptance to those other people – they may look different from me but they are equally beautiful.
We climb mountains and travel 1,000s of miles to watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean because it is beautiful. Yet, we are faced everyday with the greatest miracle of nature – the human body. Take some time to appreciate being you. You are beautiful. Take a look!
I dare you to look in the mirror at least 2 times today and say “Thank you, God for all of THIS.”
{It may add oomph to gesture towards your body while saying those words.}
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What if instead of avoiding the mirror, you really looked at your reflection?
What if you looked in the mirror not to fix things but to appreciate things?
What if we believe we are beautiful on the outside and the inside?
What if we started using our mirrors as spiritual tools?
What if you use your mirror as a way to see something beautiful everyday?
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It will take focus and work to believe our beauty. I want to help. Sign up for a worksheet/devotional on seeing and believing our own beauty.
Posted in Beauty SOS47 | Tagged: beauty, hope, mirror | 2 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on April 1, 2014
Submission.
It’s a dirty word to some. It’s a holy word to others.
but can I tell you something…?
I have found new life in it. Let me explain.
*****
“Wives, it should be no different with your husbands. Submit to them as you do to the Lord.”
– Ephesians 5
Submit.
^^That word burns^^
It burns because it seems to go against every other thing I know about our freedom. Jesus is supposed to bring a new kind of life: A free life. A life of fullness and joy and grace and love. A life where there are no power struggles because all people are equal and valued. A life where sharing a meal with your enemy or allowing the lowest to have the highest honor, is THE WAY. This is the life I want to live.
“Submit” feels like control and loss of identity.
“Submit” feels like a foot on your neck and a gag in your mouth.
“Submit” feels like a kennel you whimper in while your owners go on vacation.
“Submit” is the exact opposite of freedom.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Gal 5:1
The key came to me just a couple weeks ago and it has blown wide open my relationship to God and to my husband.
As a writer, performer, actress, speaker I SUBMIT my work and my art to companies and publications that I admire.
I put my heart and soul into my presentation, proposal, or piece of writing and I SUBMIT it.
I am submitting to that website. I am submitting to that magazine. I am submitting to that church ministry… for a chance to be accepted and then presented in new, expanded, and exciting ways.
When I submit something, I am saying “Here. Here is a piece of me. What do you think? Will you accept it? Will you take this piece and make it grow – make it even better than it could have been if it stayed inside of me or locked in a drawer somewhere?”
Imagine a book you have written. Your blood, sweat, tears, hopes and dreams are all in that book. An author knows, that book is you in a lot of ways – at least a part of you. You send it off as a submission to an agent or a publisher. You say, “This is what I have to offer. I have been brave and I have worked hard. Will you take this and help it become something bigger and better than I ever dreamed it could be?”
This is the kind of submission I can believe in. Do you see it with God?
Submit to the Lord: I work hard. I am brave. I am honest and covered in terrified freedom, but I am presenting myself – all of me – to God. I say to God, “Here. Here is all of me. What do you think? Will you accept it? I am fearful but I will not hide myself anymore. This is what I have to give. Will you take it and help me grow – make me even better than I ever dreamed I could be?”
This is the kind of submission I can live in my marriage.
Wives submit to your husbands: I am submitting myself to my husband – all of me. I am brave and free. I work hard to be the best I can be everyday. Then, with a mixture of confidence and humility, hope and love, I submit myself to him. It is not a groveling. It is an offering. There will always be things I wish were different. Like any artist, I know the limits of my skills, but I am just me. I can only be me.
Submitting means being willing to stop hiding. You can write a book and never show anyone. You can be married and never really show your spouse your whole, true self; or you can put it all out there – all your words and body and skin and dreams.
This is as beautiful as I am.
This is as graceful as I am.
This is as brave as I am.
This is as broken as I am.
This is as scared as I am.
This is as complicated as I am.
Will you accept me and catapult me to a new level of freedom and success as a child of God?
^^^^That is a Godly marriage^^^^
Maybe Submission is Romance
To you I give … ME. I give my best, my worst, my ugly and my beautiful. To you, like sunlight on a tight flower, I open. To you I turn and face and unfurl until there is no fear left, only wide stretched petals of soul and body and spirit and breath. To you I show the center of me – the part where new life is born. To you I say, Here I am.
And you respond by receiving. You take me and instead of using me up, you expand me. I submit myself to you and I bloom because of your love.
God calls us to more. By submitting to God, we are offering to live brave, open, daring lives – where each day we show up and give our everything. By submitting to each other, we are called to more – more freedom, more confidence, more beauty, more strength, more vulnerability, more adventure.
In a loving marriage, we have someone to speak to us and touch us with the love of God, the kind that takes our submission not as a neck to stand on but as a beauty and power to expand.
“Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: – you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”
― E.E. Cummings
*****
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Love and Making It | Tagged: beauty, honor, Love, love and making it, marriage, submission | 12 Comments »