So yes, girls, we all struggle over this…the whole, deeply ingrained, sometimes downright confusing and overly complex concept of our feminine beauty.
“We all work hard at being attractive, but many of us make the mistake of thinking it is stylish clothes, attractive hairstyles, or artfully applied makeup. While these outer things should not be ignored, they are not as important as your disposition, which should be sunny and bright.”
-Fascinating Womanhood
Isn’t it hard sometimes to find the line between what is cultivating beauty because, well, that’s part of our duty as women: to bring beauty to the world and particularly to our husband, home and family; and what is just plain vanity? Is it something we can measure by how many minutes a day we spend in front of a mirror, how much we let the number on the scale matter to us, how stressed we get over finding “the right” outfit on Sunday morning?
Maybe it’s good to step back and think about what it is we’re seeking, what we’re hungry for in the depth of our being. For me (and I’d be willing to guess this is the case for most women), it’s security. Security is one of the most fundamental feminine desires, to know and never have to doubt that someone loves us, that we are beautiful and precious to someone, that we have an intrinsic value to someone. We want unconditional love.
Of course, once recognizing this desire, one so deep that it can steal the breath from the center of me, the first place to take it is our dear Lord. The trickiest part, I think, of surrendering our insecurity in exchange for unconditional love, from God or other people, is just that: surrender. It means that I have to acknowledge that I am totally insecure without Divine love; that I am desperately in need of a love that does not pretend around my flaws, but takes me on as a whole. A love that will consume, purify, and re-create me into my truest self. That takes deep humility, which is the very enemy of vanity. Why is vice so perverse, to deepen our hungers that only virtue can fill up?
Of course, God, in His unsearchable Wisdom, has chosen to, very often, share this unconditional love with the heart of woman through the heart of a noble man. This is something that it is so right and natural to desire; though of course it is necessary that I find that love I hunger for in God first. Otherwise I will never be wholly satisfied or secure enough to give an unconditional love back to another wonderful, but imperfect, human being.
As we grow from girlhood into womanhood we become more aware of a desire in ourselves to be truly beautiful, with a beauty that will attract the virtuous sort of man we want for our husband. It’s instinctive, but can (and should) also rise to a spiritual level as we look inward at our heart and determine what virtues we need to adorn ourselves with to be ideal wives…and what vices we need to let go. We learn to cultivate our femininity not only on a spiritual level, but on mental, emotional, practical, and physical levels as well. It’s all part of blooming into a true woman; an essential and beautiful process.
I’ll be the first to admit that the appearance-cultivating part of this blooming has never been something that comes as naturally to me as it does to my sisters and mom. It’s not that I didn’t want to be pretty or was ever particularly tomboyish; I guess, through my teen hood, my mind was largely on other things, like being a nun or writing a book… It just took effort to put much time into styling my hair. My makeup routine has always been quick (like a minute or two) and light. Clothing…it never bothered me quite as much as it does some girls to wear the same outfit again, even if I wore to church the weekend before last. I hate clothes- and shoe-shopping. Most days find me in modest jeans and a sweater…I guess that’s just me!
Over the past couple years, as my longing for love and marriage grew, I started to pay a little more focused attention…trying to “learn my hair”…spending a little more time on my makeup to look my age, those sort of things. I got my ears pierced. I put more effort (and, at times, stress) into “looking my best” when going out because, “you never know who you’ll meet!” But strange feelings of not being good enough bothered me sometimes, the longer I spent in front of a mirror. Maybe it was a fine line I was treading between caring too much and not enough. Maybe I was more insecure than I realized.
Perhaps not every girl has an image of how they’ll look the first time they meet the man of their dreams. I think mine was somewhat vague, but along the lines of all dressed up, hair done up, face made up, for a party or dance or something like that. “Looking my best”. And hey, sometimes it happens–I saw it happen to my now happily-married older sis!
But I guess it had to be different for me.
I don’t think it was a coincidence, in God’s eyes, that I forgot my makeup that life-changing trip to Wyoming that I made last summer. It forced me, for the two weeks I was up there, to kind of let go and live. I admit sometimes, not feeling like I looked my best, I kept the attitude of “well it’s not like anyone around here is going to see me again!” But the affection and affirmation that my loving cousin (and little second cousins!) surrounded me with helped me just be me, and realize me was perfectly enough, with or without makeup, if I was a me full of love and joy. And I was–I was full of the joy of living, of being on an adventure and loving people I had never had a chance to be close to before. I was growing through the new experiences, through the homesickness, through the challenges and joys, and gaining a quiet self-respect, in a way I really needed to. It’s not that my family had ever given me anything less–for me, I guess I just needed a dramatic experience of what I already knew for it to really click in me.
But the best was yet to come, on the day that my delight in my adventure in God’s country was at its apex. I was going to ride horses, soak in a kind of “country” that I had only been able to dream about, and I didn’t care too much anymore about how I looked. I was grinning ear-to-ear most of the time as I got dusty and sweaty and sun burned (and saddle sore!), as the wind did what it wanted with my hair.
And then…there he was.
I’ve already written about this, I know, and about how our relationship got started through a beautifully old-fashioned sequence of letters.
“Ordinarily, love begins for a young girl when she becomes well enough acquainted with a young man to develop a spiritual affinity with him. She admires his qualities and abilities. She likes his attitude toward life in general. She begins to feel at ease, at home in his presence.
“Then other things begin to happen. A simple phone call brings a flutter to her heart. Her pulse quickens when he calls at her home. She has eyes for no one but him.”
-The Wife Desired
(I was reading this wonderful book last night and came across this paragraph…yep that’s what’s happened!)
Even in those early stages of acquaintance, Max was good at assuring me that what he saw in me, both in our brief, unlikely first impression and in my letters, was beautiful to him. It gave me an irreplaceable, quiet security to know that, somehow, this wonderful man saw not what I may have felt like I looked like that day (a disheveled, half-frazzled girl), but, to use his own words, a good-looking woman. 🙂 That security has only deepened with time and our growth into real friendship and love. He has made it clear to me that I’m beautiful to him, inside and out. He has made me comfortable to the point that I’ll send him selfies before I’ve put on makeup…and made me smile by asking honestly why I need makeup.
Not long ago I asked him if he remembered his “second impression”, or what he thought the first time we talked over FaceTime, a couple months after we first met. One of the first things he said was that he’d recognized my smile.
One time, when we were first getting used to talking over video chat, he asked if I wanted to talk when I wasn’t expecting it. I’d gotten out of the shower not long before and my hair was back in a tight bun (and I hadn’t exactly gotten the impression from my sister that this was my best ‘do). “Now?!” I remember texting. “My hair’s not fixed!”
“Haha I don’t care,” he wrote. When we got on he looked at me and said, “You said your hair’s not fixed?” With a smile he took off his hat. “Look at my hair!”
This is all to display how, in his genuine love and affirmation, he’s made me rethink my attitude towards my appearance. It’s still a balancing act, but one I see in a new sort of light. The act of “getting pretty”, especially before going to church together or going on a date”, is something I can do with an attitude of love instead of fear. If he’s ready to talk, I don’t worry overmuch about my hair (except to be sure it’s neat and all)…but I’m sure to put on my best smile (which to be honest isn’t much of an effort when I’m talking to him…)
I’m sure I’ll always be learning and growing when it comes to cultivating my femininity, inside and out. But this new chapter of experiencing God’s love and caring through this dear man has been such a vital step in that journey. It is humbling, in a way, to receive a love that sees more value in you than you see yourself sometimes. It’s a beautiful, and perhaps one of the the most powerful, antidote to insecurity and vanity.
Ut Cum Electis Videamus 