Hello Beautiful.

"What if you had a genuine and captivating beauty that was marred only by your own striving."

- Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge

I read these words about a week ago in John and Stasi Eldredge's book Captivating, which focuses on the brokenness and healing of the feminine heart (it's a super powerful book that I definitely recommend to all of you). This quote sparked a discussion during my bible study on the topic of striving...What are we striving for? How are we striving? Does that glorify God? How is our beauty marred by this? How do we change that? And it really got me to thinking; each and EVERY one of us is innately BEAUTIFUL. We were created in the image of the God of the universe who is more beautiful than literally anything we can fathom, and if we are created in his image how can we NOT be beautiful?! 

Society has taught us that to be beautiful one needs to be skinny and have long, pin straight hair, with bright white, straight teeth and tan skin, but in reality that's not true beauty. What I've discovered over the past week after exploring this tough concept is that true beauty comes when we are content in the Lord, his love for us, and who we are. Simple is theory, but definitely tough in practice. I know that my life especially is so full of the junk and lies of this world that my eyes are blinded to how God sees. As a 19 year old girl it makes sense, in a worldly way, that I pay a lot of unhealthy attention to what the world thinks of me. But when you really think about it, God is SO much bigger than any opinion of even you're dearest friend or randomest stranger, and in the end HIS opinion is the ONLY one that matters. And his opinion is that he LOVES you more than you can fathom and that YOU are the most BEAUTIFUL human being in the entire universe.

Let your heart soak that in. And ask God to reveal to your genuine, captivating beauty to you.

xoxo,
Abby