You Are Worthy

As I was flipping through the TV stations this evening I landed on a re-run of “Toddlers and Tiaras”. I will admit I get drawn into the circus show of all the glitz and glam that these tiny young babies are exposed to on a regular basis. By the age of 5 some of these girls have worn more make-up and hairspray than I have at age 22. But somewhere in the midst of all the drama and awkwardness of looking at a 5 year old that looks to be 17 I noticed something. These girls are being told on a regular basis that they are beautiful. Granted they are being told they are beautiful for all the WRONG reasons (this is a whole other book that I am not wanting to open right now), but each of these little pageant queens are experiencing something many girls and woman would have loved to experience as a little girl. Unfortunately many of us woman did not grow up in a household where our fathers told us we were beautiful on a consistent basis. As a result we pined for those compliments from others. When those compliments did not come our way, we began to think that maybe, just maybe we didn’t deserve to be called beautiful. Maybe there was something about us that made us ugly and unworthy of the word beautiful. These thoughts of unworthiness don’t easily leave our side. They stay with us all the time constantly whispering in our ear that we don’t deserve to be called beautiful or worthy, because we aren’t. The truly sad part is when someone does come along and honestly tells us that we are beautiful, we won’t hear it. We have so convinced ourselves that we aren’t worthy of being called beautiful that the words “You are beautiful” come at us like a blazing lie.

The reality of all of this is devastating, because if you are like me someday you will get married to a man that truly believes you are beautiful and when he looks at you and tells you this, you instantly tell yourself it is a lie. You can’t believe what your husband is saying because your whole life you have not been worthy of the title “beautiful”. The world has proved over and over to you that you have flaws and no one will ever truly believe you are beautiful. We can try to take our husband’s word for it. We can say we believe him, but until we truly believe in our hearts that we are beautiful these word fall on deaf ears.

So how do we overcome these feelings of unworthiness? I wish I could give you one simple 12-step program to believe in yourself but I can’t. What I can give to you is what your Abba Father says about you. The One who created you and said that it is good believes that you are beautiful and flawless. I pray that God will work in you so that you may believe His words about you. You deserve to be called beautiful. You are worthy of God’s love and your husband’s love.

 

You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
there is no flaw in you.  Song of Solomon 4:7