Beauty: A photoshoot linkup with an old friend!

I happily stumbled onto Katie Cook's Blog, Hope Engaged, last month and have been excitedly reading about her adventures as a missionary in Nepal. I know Katie from back when I lived in California and my father and I had the privilege of serving in Mexico with the Ryström family.  I know that it is an extreme rarity for me to publish post so close together, but consider it your lucky week! Katie shared her thoughts on beauty and then asked for her readers to join her in a photo-shoot-linkup as a way of reminding each other that our beauty is God's beauty, so I thought I'd join in the fun!

I normally I try to avoid posting pictures of myself on this blog for several reasons (safety and pride being on the top of the list), but I completely agree with Katie in the need to see beauty as God's light shining through us, and not as the meager human definition that it is so commonly refered to.

I currently have the privilege to study the process of human communication and have learned that a good portion of our communication is nonverbal. How one looks, even the things that the person has no control over, has a huge influence. We prefer symmetrical things, especially when it comes to one's face, so human beauty is defined as perfectly spaced, even sized facial features.

 Now, here is where things get tricky. My eyes are different sizes, my ears aren't aligned and I have a dimple but only on one side; my quirks continue down my body as my shoulders are different sizes and so are my feet. So by human definition, I am really quite ugly; however, the only person who has ever called me ugly has been me. It does not make any sense, I hardly make any of the qualifications of what society deems to be beautiful, and yet that is exactly what I have been told and what I am.

It is crazy how society has us running around doing our best to chase after a value that they've assigned to beauty, but to which only God has the true power to define. (1Peter 3:3-4). Remember we are made in the very image of God! The beauty that each of us bears is a hard to understand and even harder to explain to others. One of my friends worded this phenomenon perfectly by saying that 'God made us to be so much more than what society could ever define or comprehend'. 

Bearing the image of heaven should not be narrowed down to what society can see and measure as perfect, thanks Katie for the fun reminder!

Check out Katie's blog and enjoy the other photo-shoots!