Learning to Choose Grace

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

Dove launched their Beautiful campaign to help women see that feeling beautiful is a choice that each one of us can make everyday. Recently, one of the commercials from that campaign hit home for me. In the commercial, women from five cities around the world approached a building and were given the choice of two doors through which they could enter. They were being filmed, but didn’t know it. One door had the word “beautiful” on a sign hanging over it and the other had the word “average” above it. The number of gorgeous women who chose the “average” door surprised me, and the ones who chose the “beautiful” door second guessed themselves. At first, I watched in confusion, and then I realized that I would have done the same thing.

I have never felt beautiful. Usually I feel average. At best, I sometimes feel cute. When I look in the mirror, I see all of my flaws – eyes that are too big, hair color that’s fading from red to brown as I age, and freckles – lots of freckles. When I speak, I hear an accent with a Western Oklahoma twang. When I look inside, I see more imperfections – a woman who fears failure and rejection, who has trouble allowing others to get close, and scars from the past.

While my instinct is to beat myself up for my imperfections, God calls on me to allow myself some grace. I wouldn’t talk to anyone else the way I talk to myself. And I wouldn’t allow someone else to talk to one of my friends the way I talk to myself. As women, why do we find it so hard to show grace to ourselves?

God doesn’t see me the way I see myself or even as other people see me. According to Psalm 139:14, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Even more than that, I am made in the image of God, and so are you: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). I wouldn’t question God’s judgment in creating any other creature, but that is what I’m doing when I criticize myself and wonder why I am the way I am.

I’m a work in progress and always will be. As women, we are inundated with images of what the perfect woman should look like and how she should behave. But those women are airbrushed to perfection and don’t actually exist in real life.

I’m learning to be more comfortable with my flaws. And what I see as a flaw, someone else might see as one of my best qualities. Yes, I’m a control freak, but that also means I’m super organized and will get the job done. I need to learn to ease up on myself and see myself through God’s eyes. Through prayer and time spent in God’s word, I can learn to give myself grace and learn to focus on my best qualities instead of my imperfections. I can learn to see myself the way that he does – as his daughter, a child of the King.

Dear Lord, help me to overlook my imperfections and allow myself grace. Thank you that you don’t see me as I see myself and that you are revealing to me how you see me. Help me to choose to believe that I am beautiful. Amen.