comparison - Narrow Paths to Higher Places

Letters to My Daugther: On Being Beautiful

To my beautiful little girl, Kaia

Listen close, because this is something every girl should know. This is something that so few of us make it into adulthood really believing. But I tell you, my lovely princess, you are heart wrenchingly beautiful. I tell you every day because you need to know this in your core. You are beautiful because of the image you bear. You are beautiful because your character and spirit shine through your gorgeous brown eyes. You are beautiful because your small pink lips speak words of kindness and life and patience.

You are beautiful because God made you so both internally and externally. From the first time I sank my nose to your head, still soft pink with the silkiest dusting of hair and inhaled your baby scent, I was in awe. I tucked you softly to my chest and held your chubby body, curved round and still folded like a ball, while you nursed with pink puckered lips. I whispered to you how beautiful you are. I whispered that I would always love you.

You are beautiful because you were created with His perfect plan, knit together in my stretch-marked tummy by the hands of one who doesn’t ever make mistakes.

Always remember this truth. When the world tells you that you need to be skinnier, sexier, more. When the world tells you that you are not enough, you are lacking, you are deficient, look to the one who created you and know that these lies offer only counterfeits of true beauty. That what this world offers is vanity and a feasting of self. But no, you are beautiful, you always have been and you always will be. You are infinitely valuable.

I wish we lived in a world where I didn’t have to mention these things until you were much older but they are already coming at you. You are already facing these lies, even at 7. Even as I work to insulate you from these influences, it’s everywhere. It’s on the magazine covers as we grocery shop, it’s in other girls minds, it’s even in the church. My only consolation is that God offers you humility, modesty, purity, wisdom, and grace and these things make a woman beautiful. As you grow each year, I will teach you more about these ideals even as I pray to fully embrace and understand them myself. For now, these are the things I feel I must share.

Be a girl who values modesty. Modesty is not just about knee-length skirts or the avoidance of low-cut tops. Modesty is born in the heart. This is another thing I wish I could delay writing to you about but so many girls grow up with no sense of modesty and it pains me to see them in the church with hearts that love God but with clothes that love themselves and the world. We disguise immodesty with fashion, or cute, or stylish. We used the world as our compass to navigate what we should and shouldn’t wear.

I wish sometimes I could keep you seven and dress you myself all your days. I wish I could protect you from all temptation, and install a 50 ft. high electric fence around you to keep boys away but you are already rummaging through your closet and developing your own sense of style. I am reconciled to the fact that you will continue to grow into a woman and the only fence to keep you safe will be my petition of prayers, and that fence can be breached, for I am not guaranteed of your safety nor your salvation, although I long for those as only a mother can.

But I will tell you this and I hope it sinks in, because it’s coming at you, my love. If someday, you find that you are trying to be hot or sexy, you are off course. These are terms which manifest in the flaunting of something that isn’t yours to begin with. God created your body and until you marry, it is His alone. Hot or sexy are terms that inspire lust, covetousness, and consumption of this world’s ideals.

Your body is a temple of the Most High God. Adorn it with respect manifested in the way you dress and carry yourself but mostly in the desire to glorify Him with it. Your body is beautiful and precious and modesty is the way we honor its maker and our fellow brothers in Christ.

Don’t be the hot girl, with the title bestowed by this world, be a girl who is beautiful with your identity bestowed by God. Because in God, you are always beautiful.

Join me next Monday for the final Letters to My Daughter: On Being Humble

I linked up over at

Comments: 21 Comments Category: Faith, Family, Kids, Love Letters, Relationship Tags: beautiful, comparison, culture, daughters, lacking, modesty, self image

5 minute Friday: Empty

You know the drill. We write for 5 minutes flat with no second guessing, backtracking, or overthinking. We write for the pleasure of the clacking keys and the release of our words.

Then we link up at The Gypsy Mama and enjoy what others have shared. Join us. This weeks word is Empty. Ready Go.

I began this year with a blank screen and a burning desire to fill the pages with my story. This blog, born of many years of voices swirling in my mind, breaking free in narrative, inspired something new in me.
Freedom and if I’m honest, so much fear. And so my first official blog post was formed. I chose my one word 365, or rather it chose me.

Stripped.

For so many years, there have been layers of covering. Scars and sorrow and the ever present mask of self-sufficiency have disguised my sin, my disbelief, my weakness, my rebellion.
But this is the year, when that mask has begun to crumble, when I will be recovered in Him.
And God has used this passion to strip me. The process has begun.
Will I still write when there are no comments or likes or tweets?

Will I still trust Him when all things seem to go wrong and my body is fragile and weary?

Will my identity be found in Him and not in the page views on Google Analytics?

Will I speak the words that are truth to me or will I allow insecurity to plague and harass me with their slippery tongues?

Will I bathe in the gospel daily and let it cover this sin scourged soul like a healing salve?

Will I allow the words He has spoken to me to be my true story, and am I willing to follow Him wherever He leads me?

Will I let Him be the true author?

Will I let Him empty me to be filled with His story?

I pray and beg and plead that my answer will be yes. Yes, Lord. Help me to say yes.

Stop, now head over to gypsy mama to link up and enjoy other’s take on this weeks word.

Comments: 14 Comments Category: Blogging, Faith Tags: blogging, comparison, five minute Fridays, God, hurt, self image, stripped, word

Blissdom: My first blogging conference

I am leaving to go to a women’s blogging conference today. Blissdom will commence Thursday, after 700 women of all different backgrounds, writing styles, blog niches, and outfits converge on Nashville,Tennessee. The twitter boards are alive and jumping with nervous anticipation and excitement. And fear. So much fear.

Many of the women in my #Blissdomnewbies group have never been to a conference like this. Some, like me, haven’t been blogging for long at all and are still learning everything. Some have done it for years, and some have many years behind them but are just now starting to desire more from the blogging experience. A lot of us don’t know another soul. I’m lucky enough to have a bloggy friend I’ve made this year who will be there and that has given me some assurance that I’m not completely alone in a brand new city amidst a sea of women tweeting into their iPhones.

Watching these twitter boards and the conversations that flow out of them I’ve noticed a few things, and boy, do I relate!

1. Women really do want to belong.

We want to have community, we want to be one of the girls. Even the introverts (like me) want to make connections with other people who get us. Who understand that we live to write. It’s a part of me that God has created and I as I am trusting Him, I’m feeling his pleasure. It’s so important for all of us to feel connected to each other both in what we are passionate about and also with people who are different from us that we can learn from. Community is essential no matter what you do with your life.

2. Women are afraid of other women.

Maybe it’s the classic mean girls scenario that plays in your head, or the traumatic sleepover you went to in fifth grade where your “friends,” put your underwear in the freezer. Girls can be mean. When my son used to squabble with his cousin/best friend, we always knew it because someone got punched or pushed. It was all out and aggressive and then it was over. Both of them knew they were mad and both expressed it, albeit not in the best way. At least it was quickly remedied. Girls tend to one-up each other. They don’t punch each other but they jab with snide comments or the obvious exclusion of the ostracized girl. The passive-aggressive pathology of girl relationships is astounding in our culture. They have the better outfit or the better hair, and they’re gonna make sure you know it too. Some women may still be this way, but I’d venture to say that most are not. And if you see someone being a mean girl, go out of your way to be a nice one. I admit, I’ve been really hurt by girls in my life. But these past years have brought slow redemption and I am open to friendships with women where I used to be closed off. Although, there a lot of worries about fitting in at a conference like this while everyone else is witty and dazzling and you feel like you might win the award for most awkward presence in the room, most people have admitted to feeling the exact same way.

3. Women compare… A LOT.

We do. We judge and rank and profile. We hope we’re not on the bottom of the rung. We wonder if we are still a blogger if we only have a few readers, most of whom include our own family, or if we have a voice if we’re not married yet or don’t have kids. We wonder if anyone really cares what we’re saying. We wonder if the “big” bloggers out there are going to shun us with their cool big bloggerness ( yes, that is absolutely a word.) We wonder if our hair is ok, if our clothes are right, if we pack too much or too little. We wonder who’s going to wear what so we can also decide. We compare. But the truth is that we’re all so different. We all have something intrinsically unique about us and we all bring something different to the table. Be you and be great at it! You’ll never fail.

alli worthington, catherine conners, blissdom

Blissdom ladies photo credit: angryjuliemonday

4. When women get to connect in community, move past insecurity, fear, and comparison, we have a blast.

I already know I’m going to have a blast because I really don’t feel nervous anymore. I worked through all the “oh, I’m just a small blog… ” and am truly embracing it all. I’m certain there are going to be women who still feel insecure and are comparing and I say, ” I want to find them and make them feel great about themselves.” I am one of the last people to ever offer false flattery, ask my sister-in-law who went shopping with me once; I am honest. I’m not going to go around passing out fluffy comments just because, that’s not me. But because of my introversion, I am good at getting to know people and really looking deep for that special thing about them that makes them worth getting to know and maybe they’ll see that thing in me too. I’m hoping to make some great new relationships.