Beauty-filled...

When I was little I remember being a tomboy. I was the annoying little girl who wanted to traipse in the mud with the boys on my street and get my knees skinned for the fun of taking my bike down a seriously steep hill at top speed. I donned the occasional dress, and felt very pretty when I did. But When I look back on "little me", I was a boy at heart like Jo in Little Women. But like Jo, as I've gotten older I've softened. I've learned to love a good pair of classic heels and just the right sweater for most occasions. I started wearing make-up and maybe even a little toenail polish every now and then (its a VERY rare occasion to find me wearing it on my fingernails).

Yet also as I've grown older, the Lord has blessed me with opening my eyes a bit wider to my world. Fashion trends out there have become immodest for the most part, and that which isn't it kinda out of my price range. Make-up gets washed off each day and reapplied in the morning for a look that says "I'm not wearing make-up! I naturally look flawless." Those favorite heels, or flats in my case, wear out fast keeping up with little feet. I often think to myself, "I want to look nice," but the problem is not my clothes, its my attitude. I'm trying to people-please, when the Lord plainly says in Paul's letter to the Ephesians to work "not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart" (Ephesians 6:6). Yes, Paul is talking to the slave who is called to serve, but how we work with others shouldn't be any different from how we are. If we are people-pleasers at home, won't that carry over to work and visa versa?

So if we aren't called to vanity, what are we as women called to do? "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised" (Proverbs 31:30). We are called to fear the Lord. The woman of this verse (the infamous Proverbs 31 woman) was said to dress herself in strength, she's decisive, she's prepared. But what is her greatest quality in the end that fuels ALL of what she does? She fears the Lord. Her husband isn't known at the gates because she's the best dressed woman in all the land. He's known at the gates because his wife fears the Lord, and it is shown in their prosperous household. She gives glory to God alone and not to herself. That, according to Peter, makes her most precious:

"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious" (1 Peter 3:1-4)

The wife of 1 Peter 3 isn't adorned with gold, or has her hair intricately braided for show. She is adorned with a gentle and quiet spirit. Ladies, that doesn't make you doormats (as a dear friend used to say). It means you are "quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger" (James 1:19), that you are peacemaker (Matthew 5:9), and a woman who is entrenched in God's Word. For if we aren't in God's Word, how will we learn what true beauty is? "All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever" (Isaiah 40: 6b-8)

I do love a good fashion blog every now and then. But all it does for me is create covetousness, restlessness, and a desire to please from the outside. Reading God's word and having it guard my heart (Eph. 6:10-20), that does nothing but satisfy and give me a kind of nourishment that I can't help but want to share with others.