It's All Perspective

I always thought I was ugly.  Really ugly.  The ugliest thing to ever walk the planet, maybe.  I thought that all my life until someone convinced me otherwise.

I mean, there were people who told me otherwise.  But telling does not always convince.  You know?  There is a difference.  Someone told me I was beautiful quite cheaply.  I wanted to believe it, at first, but when she turned with a knife in my back, I knew my beauty was a lie.

Another told me I was beautiful rather genuinely, I thought, but when he smiled as I stabbed his back, I couldn’t help but think, this, too was fraud.

I was surprised to find my beauty in consistent boundaries: I love you too much to hurt you and too much to let you hurt me or yourself.  That application seemed smart and genuine, and in this context of love, I became convinced of my beauty.

I still needed to rectify the ugly.  How am I beautiful with all this ugly, and isn’t beauty ALWAYS fleeting, really?  

But...what is beautiful about me isn’t what you see on the surface (the fleeting beauty), though some may perceive that it is.  What is truly beautiful is the soul of me, the inner, the depth...the part with which I can touch you not lifting even a finger.  My heart.  My spirit.  Who I AM.  (That is what is beautiful about you, too!)

I have to rectify the ugliness there, too.  That is where the pieces that make me truly ugly reside...there where lie my impatience and jealousy and vindictiveness...the parts of me that would strangle the life from my own self and anyone who would dare to touch them.  

I can go my whole life pretending these evil places don’t exist within me, but they will fester away until they ravage me or until I ravage you, regardless.  That kind of ignorance is no one’s bliss.  I find it best to face my ugly head on.  

So, I look my own jealousy right in the face, and I call it by its name, and it is like salt on a snail...my jealousy withers and fades.  If I have to name it five hundred million times a day, I look my own selfishness head on, and I call it out.  Eventually, it fades.  I inspect my heart with a microscope, and I shout out to God the contents of the evil I find, “There!  There it is...wanton desire.  Remove this disease from my heart!” And the darkness is called out to the light where it cannot survive, and I am free.

I used to think weeds were beautiful.  I hesitated to kill the dandelions in my yard.  (Some could still argue the position or even my methods of eradication, but this is MY choice.). Did you know there are multiple benefits and uses for the dandelion?  You can eat the leaves like lettuce.  You can brew it (the roots, I believe) for tea.  It is known to be quite beneficial.  But...have you ever seen a yard infested with dandelions?  It is quite ugly, I think.  If you don’t control the dandelions, they will take over the yard.

If I don’t control the ugly parts in my heart, they will take over the whole of me.  Weeds can be beautiful, alluring, even pleasurable, some might say.  But fact is fact.  Weeds will eventually choke out the good in everything around them.  So, I have chosen to control my weeds.

I thought my days of beauty were complete, when He reached his hand into the mire.  I, rather timidly, latched on.  He showed me the beauty He still saw in me, and my perspective changed.  I saw the true grief in my heart, and I called it out by its name, and He is helping me work it out.  And even though I am not fully healed right now, I see beauty again.  And I know that beauty is ALL ABOUT perspective.  And I feel it is my duty to share my beauty perspective with others.  And I think...it is my perspective...that this is part of the beauty He sees in me.

"Let your thoughts dwell upon the LOVE of Christ...

who leaped into the sea of His Father's wrath to save YOU from drowning in the lake of fire."

-Thomas Watson

"The Great Gain of Godliness"

And now I'm like a child at night
Who never has to think of why
We're free to love and live and die
And there's no need to justify
The sinner that's inside of me
Has lost all his control of me
My God, from the flood and from the fire
You brought me out, I am alive
With a faith just like a child
I'm not afraid, I'm running wild
For everything that will be done
I am Yours and You are my

Deliverer.

-Matt Maher 

"Deliverer"