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by Karen Schenk
I will never forget the first dress I bought with my own money. I was 11 years old. I had saved long and hard and finally purchased the dress of my dreams for the Christmas pageant. I thought I looked like a princess. Then in one sweeping moment, that confidence dissipated and I wanted to crawl into a hole. Another girl had the same dress. I immediately realized how fickle the sense of beauty was.
When do you truly feel beautiful? Although most women pursue beauty, they would term themselves as ordinary. Nearly every woman has certain days when they do feel truly beautiful. This confidence may have come as a result of a compliment, a new wardrobe, some lost pounds or even as a result of an inner peace.
We often measure beauty by a set of standards that we are not able to compete with. We are guaranteed to fall short of the qualifications we are measuring ourselves against.
But it is possible to feel good about who we are and to allow our inner beauty to shine externally. There are steps you can take to help you obtain that sense of security.
Identify the mistruths you believe about yourself
Deep down do you believe that physical beauty matters more than inner beauty? It’s an easy message to pick up in today’s culture. External beauty is easy to measure. We look and compare ourselves with others. Women know that both women and men look at women. It is a difficult playing field if you want to look the best.
There are so many lies we tell ourselves, and all of them have the power to destroy us. If any these lies sound familiar, keep reading and learn how you can fight these lies with truth.
- “I’m not worth anything.” Our view of ourselves and our sense of worth is often determined by others. Many women are driven to gain the approval of others. When you let others determine your self-worth, you give them a lot of power to hurt you. When you learn to see yourself as intrinsically valuable, what you do or where you are cannot determine who you are.
- “I can’t help the way I am.” It is easy to believe that someone or something else is responsible for who we are and that we have no more control than a marionette does. This kind of thinking tries to remove responsibility, but in the process it takes away our choices as well.
- “I have my rights.” When focus is put on our rights being met, we are doomed to fail. Successful relationships are not built on the claiming of rights but on the yielding of rights. This doesn’t mean that if you love someone you will let them walk all over you, but rather that if we insist on always getting what we deserve we leave no room for grace.
Understand the truth
The most effective way to counterbalance lies is to replace them with the truth, and it is a process. There are usually good reasons as to why we have come to believe certain things. It’s hardly as though we woke up one morning and decided we wanted to believe and act upon mistruths. When mistruths seem to prove themselves to be true, it is very difficult to keep them from becoming part of our thinking, part of the fiber of who we are.
There are times when we may not know what the truth is. And there are also times we know what the truth is, but we’ve believed the lies for so long we don’t know how to change. Something that you have believed for years is not going to go away overnight, but there are steps you can take today to get started:
- Identify your wounds. The first step in correcting the way you think is identifying where the wounds are. When did you start thinking this way? What caused you to believe that the lies were true? Did something happen? Did someone say something? Take some time to really think about it. Journaling can really help at this stage. When the beliefs of a lifetime prove themselves to be wrong, we sometimes require help to work through them. It is important to get the right kind of help if you need it.
- Forgive those who have wounded you. If you want to be free of the bondage of those hurts, you must forgive. It is one of the most difficult – and yet liberating – things you can do. Forgiveness is not something we can will of ourselves. It is something that God is waiting to miraculously give to us. If we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, He is willing to give us what we need to forgive those who have hurt us.
- Let go of the past. After we acknowledge why we believe lies, and forgive those who have hurt us, we need to go forward and let go of the past. We could spend a lifetime nursing our wounds, but they will never heal. It’s time to stop blaming yourself or those who hurt you, and start moving forward. Moving forward doesn’t mean that you are going to wake up tomorrow morning feeling great about everything, but it does mean making a conscious choice that when you find yourself thinking about the lies you will stop and correct them with the truth.
Allow your inner beauty to shine
There isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t have weaknesses. When we learn to accept them and become comfortable with them, we become stronger. This is not to say that we shouldn’t work at some of these, but they shouldn’t be our focus. Each of us has strengths, yet sometimes we are so focused on what we are not that we don’t even see who we are.
God has made each of us unique. He intended for beauty to begin at the heart. When we feel at peace in our hearts and secure in Him, this is reflected in our outer appearance. Inner confidence is available to us as we exchange our standards of measurement for God’s. He desires us to be clothed with attributes that result in our focus being on Jesus Christ and on others.
When we clothe ourselves with God’s virtues, our focus is turned away from the external. We feel secure in Christ and at peace within ourselves. It is there that inner beauty flourishes and shines through our outer beings. This kind of beauty is a sense of inner confidence knowing that you were lovingly created by God.
What about you? Have you believed lies about yourself? Do you desire a sense of inner confidence? A relationship with Christ alone can fill up that void. God has a plan for your life. He created you uniquely and loves you unconditionally. You can get to know Him and experience that love. The first step is praying to receive Christ into your life. Praying is simply talking to God. He knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. Here's a suggested prayer:
Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life to you and ask you to come in as my Savior and Lord. Take control of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Make me the kind of woman you want me to be.
Does this prayer express the desire of your heart? You can pray it right now, and Jesus Christ will come into your life, just as He promised.
If you invited Christ into your life, thank God often that He is in your life, that He will never leave you and that you have eternal life. As you learn more about your relationship with God, and how much He loves you, you'll experience life to the fullest.
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Further Reading
Happy with My Body
Karen Schenk is the Director for TruthMedia Internet Group, of which Christian Women Today is part. She and her husband Cam have three children.
