A Certain Curiosity

 

“Beauty invites a certain curiosity. But beauty is just five minutes long if you don’t have anything else to sustain that curiosity.”

Monica Bellucci

“Pretty is as pretty does.”

Ever hear that?

With so much fixation on appearance, it probably has not been heeded with seriousness.

Let’s face it, in this society, looks matter.

And, unfortunately, we learn that lesson early. I certainly did.

As a little girl, my mother and I had a rating system for females, focusing on those exact words. It was not uncommon for the two of us to focus on a friend, a classmate, a teacher or a celebrity and decide where she fell under the “Cute, pretty, beautiful and small” system. Great mother/daughter bonding, huh?

And it wasn’t just a judge-y sport, it also underscored a dominant rule which eventually sparked my full-blown eating disorder behaviors: anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and, of course, constant self-loathing.

It sprang from the curiosity I had with beauty. It started with fairytale princesses and aesthetically pleasing dolls; they were aspirational focus points.

 But somewhere, things took a dark turn. Cute eating disorders.

“...They were now competition for me. If I could be thinner than these women, then I’d be better than they were as well… Competition grew between me and any thin girl or woman. Mirror, mirror: I had to be the thinnest one of them all. It was life or death importance, anything less than that was unacceptable. Gaining any weight, whatsoever, meant failure, simple as that...What I didn’t realize at the time was that my eyes and mind were incapable of seeing anything but a distorted image...”

(Excerpt from “Thin Enough: My Spiritual Journey Through the Living Death Of An Eating Disorder”)

Try as I might, no matter what I did, I could never perfectly attain that fuzzy four star rating. And so, what was I? Answer: an ugly failure.

Why aren’t we enough?

It’s because we don’t see what God sees. We are curious about temporal, often distorted, inaccurate and harmful depictions of beauty rather than God’s eternal, spiritual truths.

Therefore, we need God’s beauty/value rating system.

Check out The Song of Solomon:

1:15: “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.”

2:14: “O my dove…let me see your form…for your form is lovely.” 

4:1: “Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes...”

4:7: “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.”

6:4: “Thou art beautiful, O my love...”

7:10: “I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.”

Beauty is part of who we are, but it’s only one aspect. There’s so much more to our inherent value.

Let’s get curious about the full package, not just appearance!!!!

 “...I am fearfully and wonderfully made…”

Psalm 139:14

Copyright © 2016 by Sheryle Cruse