Excerpts from
Angela Thomas’s
Do
You Think I’m Beautiful? The Question Every Woman Asks
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It is okay for my soul and yours to scream, “Do you think
I’m beautiful?” And there is a
transformation happening in my life as I listen to God tell me, resoundingly,
“Yes.” The beauty that I desire is not
really about body image. (Well, okay,
it’s a little about body image. Shoot,
some days it feels like my quest for beauty is all about body image.) But the deeper beauty I long for is about
complete acceptance. (25)
If there is a question attached to the soul of a woman,
maybe it’s “Do you think I’m beautiful?”
When God answers from the depth of His great love, it makes some of us
feel like the wallflower who is asked to dance. But we can become distracted from his invitation because of the
other lovers, whispers of unbelief, noise and clutter, and because we are
sometimes the prodigal, sometimes the elder brother. To return to the music and strong embrace of God requires a
desperate and pursuing heart. And when
a woman chooses to remain in His arms of devotion, God gives the only hope we
have—His perfect love—and a beautiful crown.
God is enthralled with the beauty of a woman and calls her His
beloved. He wildly pursues her heart
with romance and intimacy to make her the beautiful bride. (201)
I’ve never been sure that someone would walk across that
dance floor and call my name. There
have been seasons when I decided my life was supposed to be that way. Everyone else got pulled onto the dance
floor, and some were even bold enough to run out and boogie by themselves, but
I couldn’t. Maybe it just wasn’t meant
for me. I felt my feet want to. It sure
did look like fun. “Nah,” I’d tell
myself, “Quit dreaming about dancing and go make dinner.”
Here is what I am learning about God. There are no faceless women standing around
the edge of the room with Him. He did
not bring you to the dance just to shove you into a corner and tell you to have
a great time watching. You were made
for strobe lights, and you do not have to shuffle around in the shadows hoping
that one day it’ll be your turn. You
are not just one of the crowd. God sees
you, and He sees me. He walks across
the room, looks directly at you, and says that you are beautiful. You are not a “wanna’ be” to Him, and
neither am I. He calls out every
wallflower, I mean every single one, and asks her to dance.
Kerry Gibson was the newest, cutest guy on the scene when I
was in the 11th grade. I had seen Kerry
entertaining the girls after football games at Sir PIzza, but Kerry Gibson had
never seen me. But one night Kerry walks over to me at a new dance club, and in
his best Animal House impersonation, he said to the guy standing next to me,”
Mind if I dance with your date?” The
guy beside me couldn’t get it out fast enough: “Man, she’s not with me.” There was no way Kerry Gibson had just asked
me to dance. I don’t remember
breathing. I was so afraid of ruining
the whole thing. Well, we danced. I wish
--more--
I could remember the song.
But the song was over way too soon.
His act of charity was coming to an end. I could feel it—the good deed was over. But then bless him—I mean it, God bless him—Kerry Gibson said,
“Wait, do you want to keep dancing?” I
think I nodded yes, and we danced every dance until I had to go home. Do you want to keep dancing? The question still rings in my head. It makes my cry and smile and whisper a
prayer for my daughters: “God, make sure someone asks them to keep dancing.”
(31)
When my daughter, Taylor, was
about four years old, we were driving through McDonald’s for a Happy Meal. When we got to the window, Taylor had gotten
out of her seatbelt and was practically on top of me, staring at the woman who
was talking to us. When I looked up, I
saw one of the most made-up women I have ever met. Her foundation was thick and the wrong color. Her lips were drawn on with a pencil and
filled in with the brightest red lipstick you can buy. Her eyelids were covered with shiny blue eye
shadow and accented with false eyelashes.
Her hair was platinum, teased, and swept up in a beehive. She wasn’t attractive to me. In fact, in my eyes she was tacky and offensive. As we drove away, Taylor, almost breathless,
turned to me and said, “Oh, Mama, don’t you think she is the most beautiful
woman you’ve ever seen?” I don’t even
remember what I said to Taylor, but I do remember thinking, I have just been
busted by a four-year-old. All that
matters is in the eye of the beholder.
We must realize that there will never be healthy love
between a woman and a man until she comes to rest and find her being in the
great love of God. God’s love gives wisdom
in discerning the man. God’s love gives
direction and patience and hope. God’s
love lets us smile at the man’s quirks, just like God smiles at ours. I hope you have heard me. A good man can be wonderful. But he can never be enough, and he
can never make you whole. You
and I were made for even more. We were
made for God. (63)
The noise in our heads comes from a hundred
places—unanswered longings, lies we’ve believed, fears we’ve embraced, choices
we’ve made. The noise keeps getting
louder through the years and then one day we can’t hear God calling our names
anymore. All we can hear are the
accusations and the questions and the longings. We cannot avoid them. We
lie down for bed, and they howl through the night. We sit in the bleachers and listen to their conversations about
us. The noise will not be
silenced. We can’t find a switch to
turn it off. The problem is that we are
not able. Only Jesus can still the
soul. Only Jesus can quiet the noise.
Why do we have such a hard time believing that God would
look at an ordinary or disfigured woman, call her beautiful, and long for
intimacy with her? Maybe we can believe
that for someone else, but why can’t we believe it for ourselves? Why do we have such a difficult time
allowing God’s unfailing love to embrace the ugliness of our flaws and the
desperateness of our sin? Why do we
think that we’ve gone too far this time, stayed away too long or paid too great
a price to be asked to dance again? The
world whispers, “Don’t believe it,” and we listen. (75)
--more--
Most of my Jesus days, I have been a great church lady. Do you know any women like me? We smile a lot. We serve a lot. The
church lady just keeps working and giving and smiling until one day the quilted
cover on her study Bible gets ripped and that’s about all she can take. The church lady begins to hold toddlers
hostage in the nursery until somebody promises to take her name off the “Call
her, she’ll do anything” list.
Maybe you’ve taken so many spiritual gifts tests that you’re
bored with gifts. You just keep going
to workshops and listening to the same dull stuff, hoping something new and
radical will pop up. Maybe you’ve done
so many Bible studies and listened to so many sermon tapes that you’ve almost
decided there is nothing new under the sun.
Maybe you’re tired of serving.
Tired of smiling. And tired of
prayer requests about Aunt Margie’s cousin’s wife’s bunions. Maybe you have become a proper church
lady. Theologically educated.
Hospitable. Quiet and gentle. But for some of us, incredibly empty.
Where is the passion, for heaven’s sake?
Where is the dance? Would
somebody turn up the music? Maybe we’re
missing something. We’re hanging out at the church, being quasi-faithful to
pray and read the Bible, confessing and repenting and accountable fourteen ways
from Sunday. So why aren’t more of us
operating in strength? Why is my
counselor booked solid with Christian women who are dying on the inside,
longing to be know as beautiful, suffering underneath the weight of guilt and
pain? Why are we sad and hesitant and
afraid? (133-134)
I’ve moved from church lady into the freedom of honesty and
desperate pursuit. It has been a scary
journey for me. But I finally came to
realize that I was never going to get to the heart of God by staying inside the
lines I had drawn around my life. The life I longed for was on the other side
of what had made me feel safe.
Some of us may have had to lay aside our church-lady
pretense in order to stand before God as the unchurch lady, raw and without
excuse. Dancing with God requires
vulnerability and a true assessment of where we stand, the resources we have,
and the struggles we face. (139)
I am dancing with God.
Maybe more intimately than I ever have in my life. I can hear the music, feel the strong arms
of My Beloved, sense His gentle leading in every turn, and know that my soul is
resting in the assurance of His presence. I have not come to this romantic
dance with God because I memorized Song of Songs or attended three more Bible
studies last year or finally got disciplined and began praying every morning at
4:00 AM. No, I have come to this dance
because my world caved in, pretense fell away, every prop I had leaned on
broke, and finally, there was nothing. (83)
Do you believe that there could be a party waiting for
you? You must choose to believe
it. Your Father in heaven looks for
your return. He runs the distance
between you and scoops you up into His arms of forgiveness and love. He celebrates holding you again. He celebrates with music and dance.
--more--
Does that sound like love to you? It sounds like it to me.
We might even say that kind of love is blind. God’s love for is not blind, but it feels the same. Because we are covered by the blood of
Christ, He is blind to our past. Blind
to our squandering. Blind to our
worth. His love is intimate love. Romantic love. Wild about you love. (119)
When a woman walks into a room she
is either screaming, “Do you think I’m beautiful?” or she has been taught never
to ask that question again. But every
once in a while, a woman walks into a room and you know that she knows that God
calls her beautiful. There is peace and
strength and energy that come from belonging to Him. There is a confidence that is captivating. I want to be that woman. Everything inside me want s to be a woman
who loves in that kind of grace and assurance!
(26)
Excerpts are from Do You Think I’m Beautiful: The
Question Every Woman Asks by Angela Thomas (Thomas Nelson, 2003)