I wish I were pretty.

I wish I were pretty.

After all, we live in a culture that assigns worth and respectability almost exclusively based on appearance. In fact, I'd say that cultural norm is so prevalent that I don't even need to waste space here proving it (though I could). I mean, we've all heard how men talk about women, right? And honestly, even most women evaluate whether another person is worth their time and interest based on how good they look. So it would be nice to be pretty and thus earn that stamp of approval.


TO CLARIFY...
(Now, look...I know I'm not the bottom of the barrel as far as looks go. But I also know that there's a reason I don't let you see me without makeup. And I also know based on experience that if I walk into a room with ANY other woman, the man's going to choose her over me. And sometimes that upsets me because it would be nice to be noticed and validated.)

So anyway, I'm not saying this to fish for compliments. After all, I wouldn't believe you even if you said I was pretty. How could your pity compliment ever hope to outweigh all the evidence to the contrary...

• Jason who walked into my 11th grade history class and announced to everyone, "Jill is ugly!"
• Jeff who refused to go to prom with me because I had red hair.
• Jessica who told me I wasn't pretty enough to have a boyfriend.
• Tara who told me she was the pretty friend and I was the smart friend. 
• Luke who completely forgot he was talking to me whenever a pretty girl walked in the room.

I could go on and on. But that's not my point. My point is that since I've believed throughout my life that I'm not pretty - and yet prettiness is something on which our culture places great importance - these are the kinds of things that have gone through my mind:

You're not pretty enough, so you don't measure up. Since you're not pretty, you're scum and you're not worth anyone's time or interest. In fact, the best thing you can do for people is just stay away from them, because all you do when you show up is blemish the otherwise beautiful view in front of them. You should be ashamed of yourself.

WHERE I'M COMING FROM
And for a long time I WAS ashamed of myself. I believed those voices in my head, and I responded to them in two contradictory ways:

1. On the one hand, I'd get SO MAD. You see, I'm fairly certain that regardless of how unattractive the outer casing might be, deep down underneath my flesh, there lives the REAL me who is extremely valuable and worthy of respect and notice - completely independent of how I look on the outside! So I HATED when people made evaluations of me based on my outward appearance, because that's not the real me. I desperately wanted people to develop x-ray vision so they could look through the outer shell and value the REAL Jill inside!
2. On the other hand, I really did want people to look at my outward appearance...and then to tell me that I measured up. I DID want to be labeled as pretty (and therefore, worthy). So I spent massive amounts of time and effort trying to improve my appearance (putting on makeup, fixing my hair, picking out the right clothes, working out, etc.) and then freaking out if anything happened to ruin it. Damn you, humidity!!!

Basically I didn't care which way people wanted to swing...they could either a) look past my appearance and see the real me, or b) look at my appearance and judge it highly...but what I couldn't handle was to continue to receive that label: "Unworthy!"

I struggled with that sense of shame until I was about 30 years old...believing that because I'm not pretty, I'm not worthy of anyone's time or interest. But through a series of circumstances, God started giving me a glimpse of how he feels about me. I started to believe that my Creator doesn't love me just in a general sense, but that he actively pursues me and desires me and delights in me and WANTS me. I started to believe that God gives me TONS of time and attention...that he could gaze at me for hours without getting tired of it...that when I walk in the room, I'm the only one he sees.

When I started believing that, it just made other people's opinions pale in importance. (I mean, I still care what I look like and what people think about me, but not NEARLY to the same extent. It's no longer something I obsess about.) I started to believe God sees me as beautiful, and that's all that matters.


THIS WEEK'S RELAPSE
So why am I talking about this now? Well, I had a relapse (a.k.a. FREAK OUT) this week. Here's how it happened. I was talking with my friend Danielle about our mutual friend Tom, who's made it clear over the years that associating with an unattractive woman is a waste of his time and energy. Recently someone ran across his profile on Match.com, and in it Tom said that he's looking for a woman who "looks good without makeup, wearing a t-shirt and jeans."

Okay, so that's a pretty standard thing to write in a dating profile. But I have to tell you, when I heard that, I just about had a conniption. No joke. I'm talking about yelling-in-public kind of mad. Why did that bother me so much? Well, suddenly all those old voices rushed back in and started reading to me between the lines. And the message I heard was this:

A woman is only worth being shown attention if she's naturally pretty. If she's not born pretty, then she's got no hope. She's scum. And she's not allowed to DO anything to make herself look better or to be more worthy. She's just condemned to a lifetime of unworthiness with no way out. AND THAT MEANS YOU, JILL!!!

And when I heard that, I started seeing red...because though Tom was making just a general statement, it felt like he was condemning ME. Here's the thing...I know I'm not naturally pretty. But that's not a fate I CHOSE for myself! It's not like I'm TRYING to uglify anyone's surroundings. If I'd had a choice, I would have looked like Halle Berry! But I didn't. I was completely out of control in choosing what I'd look like. And to now be called unworthy and cast aside based on something I didn't choose and can't even do anything about...well, I felt so frustrated and condemned that I wanted to twist Tom's little head round and round on his neck until it popped right off the top of his body.

All I could think was that life would be so much easier if I'd just been born pretty. THAT'S the solution. If I were pretty, then I'd measure up and I'd be worth something.


BUT WHAT IF I GET CANCER?
But as I continued down that line of thought, I came to the same conclusion I've reached many times before - that's actually no solution at all. I mean, what would things be like if I WERE pretty? What if my appearance WAS good enough to merit a positive evaluation? And what if someone DID declare me pretty enough to be worthy of time and attention?

If I did live up to standards appearance-wise, that would be nice for the time being...but what's going to happen if I get cancer or if something else happens to ruin my looks? Or what about when I just get old and wrinkled? If my worth IS based on my appearance, then when time or circumstances take that away, doesn't logic dictate that I would then no longer be valuable - that I'd become scum?

If a man were to give me his time and attention based on my appearance...and then I were to get cancer...wouldn't that mean he'd be justified in rejecting me when I was at my lowest point; at the time when I needed him the MOST? How could I be secure in a relationship dependent on my appearance? Why would I WANT a relationship like that? If he doesn't love me when I'm ugly, then he doesn't actually love ME.

Then the thought came to me, "Jill, if your worth is dependent on your appearance, then if you get cancer, you may as well kill yourself. After all, you won't be worth anything to anybody in that ugly condition." (Disclaimer: I do not condone this thought. I'm just saying it went through my head.)

Yikes. As I took the belief - "Your worth is dependent on your appearance" - and ran it out to its ultimate conclusions, my blood started boiling...because if our worth is based on our appearance, then things are hopeless for EVERYBODY! That's bad news for the ugly (right now) AND bad news for the pretty (when their looks fail)!


ARGUING WITH MYSELF
Clearly I was pretty worked up, so I started talking about this with some friends. Of course, when I shared my distress about Tom's profile, they fed me the standard line..."Just deal with it! That's just how guys are wired...they're all about the visual. That's just how it is." And honestly, that made me MORE ready to explode because in addition to all the condemnation I already felt, this latest statement said to me:

You're cast aside because you're not pretty...and you have no right to be upset about that kind of treatment, because men are CORRECT to condemn you. That's an okay thing for them to do, because it's just how God made them. In fact, God's okay with people condemning you. That's what he designed them to do.

What?!?! Now I'm sorry, but the heavenly Father I know doesn't tell people to go around condemning others. So I knew that message couldn't be from him, and I knew I needed to do some work to separate the lies from the truth in my head.

I started trying to talk myself down off the cliff using the following arguments:

• Sure, maybe that's how men (people) ARE - that their first instinct is to judge based on appearance - but that can't be how God DESIGNED us to be. That desire to evaluate and cast someone aside based on appearance causes separation and condemnation...so it has to be a result of the Fall; NOT a part of our original design. And in that case, even if it's someone's first instinct to focus solely on appearance, isn't it a first instinct that needs to be FOUGHT against rather than just accepted? I mean, just because something is a first instinct doesn't mean it's RIGHT. After all, my first instinct is to eat every donut and cookie set in front of me. But that doesn't mean I should DO it! It's much more healthy to set aside that first instinct in order to live in freedom and self-control. So in my mind it's a cop-out to simply accept our tendency to judge and to explain it as "That's just the way we're wired." And it's wrong to tell me I just have to accept being called scum, because that's NOT what God wants for me. (But this argument, rather than calming me down, just got me more worked up and angry as I seethed about all the people who were "doing me wrong" in this regard.)

• Anger felt no better than despair, so then I moved on to this argument: Hello, a person is not just a body! A person is body, soul, and spirit. And it's my spirit that's the truest part of who I am; not my body. If parts of my body got cut off, I'd still be ME. That's because it's my spirit that God sees when he looks at me, and it's my spirit to which he relates when he talks to me. It's my spirit where my true identity is found, and that spirit was made perfect, pure, whole, and righteous when I accepted Christ. THAT'S why God sees me as beautiful...because he's looking at the spirit inside me...which he has made perfect. My body, on the other hand, is just the outward casing in which my spirit is living right now. So anyone who looks at my body and makes judgments is not evaluating the true ME. After all, when I evaluate the worth of my iPhone, I don't look at the case it's in; I look at the iPhone itself!!! So people who evaluate my worth based on my looks are wrong. (But this argument didn't calm me down either. Rather, it got me more indignant toward the people who ignore the true me.)

• Indignation didn't feel any better than anger or despair, so then I started arguing along this line: Dude, these messages I'm hearing CANNOT be coming from my heavenly Father. He doesn't talk like that. His voice isn't tinged with tones of hopelessness and accusation and shame. Rather, my Dad's voice sounds like love, joy, peace, and freedom (Gal 5:1&22). My Dad brings life to the full (Jn 10:10). My Dad says that wherever he is, there is no condemnation (Rom 8:1). So I know HE can't be the one sending me these messages of guilt and shame. That has to be coming from my Dad's Enemy who tries to steal, kill and destroy (Jn 10:10) and whose mission is to accuse me day and night (Rev 12:10). In fact, just as I was processing all this, I was listening to an mp3 where the speaker said this: If what you're hearing is..."You're bad...stay over there and stay away from me...here's what's bad about you"...That's not the heart of the Father. That's not something that comes from him. No accusation comes from the Father. None. He might convict of sin because he's headed toward righteousness. But he wouldn't do it with shame attached to it. Well, that was timely!!! So as it became clear that all these condemning messages were a load of crap from the Enemy, I started arguing with HIM instead of myself. I started saying, "Look here, spirit of accusation, you're wrong! I AM beautiful! I DON'T deserve condemnation! I DO measure up!" (But honestly, that just wasn't working...because the whole time I was arguing with him, there was a part of me that was saying, "Actually, Jill, you DON'T measure up. Let me show you the evidence.")

AN ARGUMENT THAT WORKED

So I was feeling really stuck inside my shame and hopelessness and anger and indignation and disbelief. None of my arguments were working and I didn't know how to get out, so I just cried out to Jesus..."Save me!"

That's when I heard the next thing the speaker said on the mp3. He read Colossians 1:22, which says:

Once you were alienated...but now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation...

And suddenly I realized this:

Yeah, it might be true that I haven't measured up to the world's standards (that alienation has been REAL), but I've frickin' been FORGIVEN for that! 

So I don't have to live under the accusation, shame and guilt of that anymore because I've been forgiven for ALL the ways I don't measure up! It's over with. Finished. I've been absolved from needing to pay the penalty for that. The debt I owe for blemishing the world's landscape has been PAID. And I am certainly not going to keep living under this cloud of condemnation, continuing to pay a debt that's already been reconciled! I'm forgiven!

And let me tell you, that feels like freedom. That feels like joy. That feels like life and peace.

Actually most of all, that makes me feel like this entire topic is a moot point about which I don't need to waste any more time obsessing. (Or to quote Joey, a "moo point.")

I may be pretty; I may not be pretty...it really doesn't matter because for every point where I didn't measure up, I'VE BEEN FORGIVEN. What a relief. :)


ONE MORE QUESTION
So the only question left is...how the heck did I end up in this unblemished condition? How did I get made beautiful?

That's when I suddenly remembered Isaiah 53:2-6.

There was nothing attractive about him,
  nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
  a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
  We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
  our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.

Geez Louise, that gives me chills...because the description here sounds awfully familiar - someone who is unattractive and is therefore looked down on, passed over, and deemed unworthy of attention; someone who is labeled scum. That is EXACTLY how I've felt throughout my life. But the crazy thing is...this isn't a description of me; it's a description of Jesus.

What??? Why in the world would the beautiful and worthy King of the Universe be seen as unattractive and undesirable? Why would Jesus let himself be dismissed as scum?

Well, the crazy thing this passage tells me is that HE DID IT FOR ME. Jesus took on all my disfigurement, all the things wrong with me, all the ways I didn't measure up. He took on my identity of unattractiveness and undesirability...so that I could take on his identity and be made whole. He took on my blemishes so I could take on his perfection. He became scum so I could be chosen. He was punished for my inability to measure up - so that I WOULDN'T HAVE TO BE.

And that's why I refuse to receive that condemnation any longer. Pretty; shmetty; I don't care. I'm a treasure to God, and that's all that matters.