For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be beautiful.  I wanted to be beautiful in a way that was deep and noticeable— an undeniable kind of beautiful.

 

Even to this day, that iconic fairytale scene plays out in my head:

 

Girl walks down street.  Boy rides by on bike.  They make eye contact.  Boy keeps staring back at the girl in awe as he crashes his bike into the nearby lamp stand.  He gets up, dusts himself off, and asks out the beautiful girl.  They both laugh and link hands and disappear into a crowded cafe.

 

I don’t know where I got that idea— maybe I saw it in a movie or read it in a book, but it has stayed with me forever.  I wanted to be that beautiful.  I wanted to be show-stopping, heart-racing, overwhelmingly beautiful.

 

But I never was.  And looking forward, I kind of doubt that I ever will be.

 

I look at myself and I don’t see the breath-of-fresh-air woman who is wispy and clumsy and chaotically beautiful.  But I also don’t see the woman who is put together and confident and fabulously gorgeous.  I see myself frumpy and unappealing: messy with a side of tired.

 

I don’t feel like I fit the stereotypes and I don’t see a way that I ever will.  I don’t see myself as beautiful and my mind has never quite reconciled itself to that reality.

 

Every part of me battles against every part of truth that advocates for my beauty.  When people tell me I’m beautiful, I chalk it up to pity or bias.  The age-old phrase of, “they’re just saying that” sends chills of shame down my spine, and only because it’s been one of my most frequent excuses to deny compliments.

 

When someone tells me that I’m beautiful, disbelief sets up walls and distrust builds boundaries.  I look for reasons to disqualify their remarks and retreat to the safety of solitude and self-hatred.  I desperately long to be beautiful, but I also fiercely disbelieve that I ever will be.

 

For me, it’s always something.  It’s always my weight, my hair or the length of my legs.  I walk round and round, never leaving the revolving door of insecurity, blind to the truth that even exiting in the wrong direction is progress.

 

So, I stay in that.  Every once in a while, I’ll step out of the cycle of pain and self-hatred and breathe in the deeply refreshing air of self-love and security in who I was made to be.  Sometimes I even walk around the lobby of Heaven, drinking in the golden truth of who the Father says that I am.

 

But something always seems to happen…. something always seems to send me running back.

 

Maybe I’m not used to being loved so deeply: so completely: so irrevocably in the way that the Father loves.

 

Maybe I’m unaccustomed to agreeing with my own value and worth and beauty.

 

Maybe I am just more comfortable in insecurity than I am in blind trust.

 

But for whatever reason, I return to the revolving door of insecurity and I rest there.

 

Yet my rest is not rest, because my “rest” is spent worrying about how appealing I am to others.

 

I just want to be beautiful.

 

I want to be seen for what people tell me that God sees.  I want to wear my value on my body, and I want to come into agreement with it completely.  I want to, but I never seem to be able to.

 

Then, like an unexpected tidal wave: bold and overtaking and powerful, God hit me with a revelation for me, given to me by me, disguised as a word for someone else.

 

I was at a conference not long ago, and in the middle of worship, God highlighted a woman on the other side of the crowd.

 

As if in a movie, I weaved through the thick crowd of people towards this golden-haired beauty.  She was fully immersed in worship and I almost didn’t want to interrupt.  She was completely captivated by the Lord and she was completely captivating to the Lord.  In that moment, my vision lined up with His and I saw how enamored He was with her.

 

I lightly touched her shoulder as her focus broke.  Tentatively, I told her that I felt like the Lord had given me a Word for her and I asked if she was open to hearing it.

 

Once she agreed, I unravelled the poetic and detailed Word that I had heard.  She teared up, and I felt a familiar tightening in my chest.  Why was I getting emotional?

 

She hugged me and I hugged her back— the Word sitting on both of us like weighted dumbbells.  She was experiencing the weight of Glory, and I, the weight of burden, but the weight sat on us all the same.

 

I squeezed her tightly one more time as an indication that I was going to let go, and then I backed away.  The crowd around me opened and I was swallowed back into the sea of people.

 

As I floated away, those words echoed in my head, growing louder with each reverberation.

 

“He houses beautiful perfume in beautiful vessels.”

 

When He had first shown me this woman, I knew that He wanted to share His truth about her beauty.  His truth was beautiful and eloquent, and I was almost jealous that I had never known a love or infatuation like that before.

 

His words unwound years of hurt and emotional abuse, and I found my heart yearning for Him to speak the same to me.

 

I spoke those words to her, and as I spoke them, I realized how desperately I needed to hear them in return.

 

“You are beautiful,” He said, softly and slowly.  “Your worship is beautiful.”

 

He paused for a moment, as if He was drinking in the moment.  “Your worship is beautiful because of the sound and the heart behind it, but your worship is beautiful because of how you worship.  From the way you tilt your chin towards the sky and angle your arms towards mine makes me swoon.  How you lift your heels as if you were ascending into heaven takes My breath away.  Your worship is beautiful because you are beautiful.”

 

I could feel my heart sink with desire.  I was so grateful for the opportunity to share the Lord’s heart with her but so in need of hearing His heart for me.

 

“Many people have called out your inward beauty, and it’s true that you possess great amounts of it.”  The Lord paused again, as if to give His next point room to expand.  “But that is not all you have.  You have outward beauty, too. You possess vast amounts of that.”

 

“I made you to be a vessel of worship, but I made you to be a beautiful vessel.”

 

Tears spilled out onto her cheeks as she raised her eyes to the sky.  “Your worship is like Mary’s: sweet perfume poured out on the feet of Jesus.  It is highly valuable and worth an entire lifetime of wages.  In Biblical times, people stored their finances in assets, like fine perfumes.  They would bank their money in beautiful perfume, and they would store it in a beautiful vessel.  You don’t store beautiful perfume in a cheaply made bottle.”

 

“Your worship is the perfume— it is the savings born of hard work and emotional toil— and you are the beautiful, priceless alabaster box that holds its contents.  If your worship captives Me with its beauty, how much more does your vessel?  I only store beautiful perfumes inside of beautiful vessels.”

 

I took a deep breath as I finished the delivery, and the woman sighed a deep breath of relief.  As she embraced me, she gushed about what the Word meant and what confirmation it delivered, and I rejoiced alongside of her.  I rejoiced alongside her until I knew that there was something there for me rejoice in too.

 

I stepped back, looking at the fuller picture.

 

One of us is not more loved than the next.  What is true about my worth and value is true of yours too.  God is not a God of favorites or exclusivity.

 

His words for her— His heart for her and His feelings for her and His sentiments towards her— they all mirror the same heart and feelings and sentiments that He has for me.

 

I spent decades believing that I was valuable only for what I had to offer and beautiful for how my heart looked, but I never stopped to consider that the outside is just as important to God as the inside is.

 

We tell people that it’s the inside that counts, and while there is definitely truth in that, it also invalidates the fact that God is a magnificent artist who carefully and thoughtfully designed each one of us.

 

Suddenly, my desire to be beautiful wasn’t just vanity: it was my spirit’s desire to be recognized for what God created it to be: a beautiful vessel.

 

Each and every one of us is an intricately carved and masterfully made alabaster box.  We contain the richness of our life: worship and love and abilities that can be poured out at the feet of Jesus.  We contain the vast beauty of life and light within us, and we are able to do that because we were beautifully designed to do so.

 

We are the show-stopping beauty of an extravagant jar.  We encase beauty, and we are encased by beauty.

 

That night, with that Word, Jesus desired to minister to that woman.  But on that night, with that Word, Jesus chose to minister to me as well.

 

And hopefully, with this very same Word, He can minister to you as well.

 

“Daughter, you are beautiful.  You are desirable.  I desire you— but not in a way that will use you up.  I desire to be near you.  I love to feel your breath on My shoulder as you sigh out the burdens of the world after a long day.  I love to watch you fall asleep— your body relaxes, and tensions leave, and you fall into sweet peace.  I love the way you scrunch your nose up when you try not to laugh and the way you furrow your eyebrows together when you’re in deep concentration.  I pay attention to everything you do because I am so in love with you and everything that you do.”

 

“I am sorry that the world has told you that you’re not beautiful.  I am sorry that shifting standards have fought to hide My truth.  I am sorry that you are burdened with self-hatred.  If you could only SEE the time that I put into creating you— oh how your heart would flutter! I think fondly of time spent allocating freckles on your shoulders and blush on your cheeks.  From carefully considering how many minuscule hairs would be on your arm to how many belonged on your head, everything was thoughtful, intentional, prayerfully considered.”

 

“I know that people tell you that I don’t make mistakes, and that’s true.  I don’t.  It’s not in my nature.  But more so than that, I CHOOSE for things to be the way that they are.  It’s not that “it’s no mistake that your torso is that long”, it’s that I spent time and energy and love deciding that I wanted it to be just that length and just that width.  Saying it’s no mistake is correct, but it’s also something that I chose after purposeful thought.”

 

“You are an alabaster box.  You are worthy, valuable and sought after.  You are important.  You are extravagant in your beauty and in your worth.  You are a vessel for something beautiful.  But you are a beautiful vessel.  I designed you that way.  Don’t ever be embarrassed to want to come into agreement with that.  I made you with value and I want nothing more than to see you agree with it.  Choose to know your beauty today.  You’re absolutely worth it.”