Redefined: My First Step to Freedom

This topic of beauty is one that's been on my mind for a long time now. Night and day it consumed my mind so completely that I almost felt as if I was going crazy. What does it mean to be beautiful Lord?

Instead of answering me right away, He first showed me how beauty had become an idol in my life (read more about that here) and that's where  I got to my lowest point. This is a bit of the journal entry that I wrote a while ago when I realized how ugly I felt:

March 14, 2013
 

I still feel like the same person.

I feel like such a phony, a fake, a  FRAUD. The only thing that keeps me from doing what I used to do is the fact that I know what people would think of me if they found out. I want to be this perfect little Christian with a clean track record so that I can somehow be holier, and people will think I'm so much better than I actually am.

I do 'the right thing' out of pride.

It's why  I feel ugly to my very core, because I'm still a whore.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

Finally, one night as I was tossing and turning with this question in my head of what it means to be beautiful, another question popped in, why don't I think I'm beautiful?

Because I'm disgusting

What does God say about that?

"Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!"  2 Corinthians 5:17 (Amplified)

That's when it hit me.

When I came before the Lord, I came to him in a wedding dress that was marked with mud and torn apart; I asked Him to please forgive me for these stains, I needed Him. He responded by giving me a new dress, one that was beautiful and the perfect fit for me.  I admired it so much, and was in disbelief that it was mine. All mine. When I looked in the mirror, with my new dress on, I saw beauty. It was marvelous.

But as time went on, and I began to look in the mirror and see my old dress. I'm not sure why, maybe I never thought it was truly mine. All I know is that I was scared that others would see that dress on me instead of the beautiful one that the Lord gave me. I frantically tried to scrub away the stains, sew up the tears, reshape and cut the dress so that it would look like the new one. It's what was expected of me.

Needless to say, I finally understood why I felt as ugly as I did.

For the years that I've been a Christian, I never once felt as if I had been washed of my sins. They clung to me like a spider web clings to your hair and you feel like the bugs crawled in to make their home there. I never felt easy, as if my sin followed me everywhere I went. Then the lie finally came out, and the Lord unveiled what it was that I've believed my entire life:

To be beautiful means to be perfect. Both on the outside, and on the inside.

And then, it all made sense.

All this time, I felt so ugly for who I was and the things that I've done. Once I became a Christian, I felt as though I had to leave my old life and do "the Christian thing". Go to church, stop swearing, stop with my suicidal thoughts, stop with the junk I was reading, watching and listening to, stop talking to certain people. Just STOP. I'm a Christian,  I can't do that. But it didn't change the fact that I still wanted to do those things.

When I finally let God in,  I was so scared at what He would say when He saw my old dress again. Would He be mad? Disgusted? Would He reject me?

No, none of those things. He only turned me around and said, "Look in my mirror."

When I did, I saw the beautiful dress that He had given me, white as ever with all the pearls and lace in the right places.

"I don't understand," I told Him. "Before-"

"You looked in your mirror, and you saw yourself through your eyes. When you look in my mirror, you see yourself through my eyes."

I knelt down on the floor and looked in His mirror again, seeing myself with beauty. Then I turned my head and looked in the other mirror, and saw myself with ugliness.

"Then who am I?" I asked, unsure. "Which one Lord?"

"How I see you is true, Lisette. Your old self is gone, what I'm looking at before me is all that there is."

That's all there is.

The world defines you by your actions and appearances, labelling you as "beautiful" or ugly". I'm not defined by the world anymore, but by what God thinks of me: His pure and spotless bride.

I've decided that my next step in freedom is to truly believe that I have been redefined, and to do that I'm going to renew my mind with the truth.

At every moment when I feel ugly because of my past, I'm going to memorize and repeat 2 Corinthians 5:17 to myself. At first, it'll feel like I'm just saying empty words to myself. Nothing will feel different, and I might even get tired of it. I have faith though, that the Word of God will bring me freedom because He promised it would. One day, I'll be able to repeat that verse to myself as a confirmation of what God has done in my life instead of striving to claim this truth as my own.

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32

I believe in you Lord. I believe in you and the miracles you're going to perform in my heart and in my life. My time for restoration and renewal is here, and I trust you to carry me all the way to the end. Thank you.