i'm the ugly duckling.

It happened when I was ten, a chunky little fifth grader with mousy brown hair and a stubborn soul. I'm not exactly sure what I was told to wear that morning, but I know what I ended up wearing. Because it is there, memorialized in color, on a 5x7 school picture. I was accustomed to glasses at this point, and had picked out blue plastic frames; I was ten, but still? Really? I wore a pattered blue dress, blue socks, and blue sandals. I apparently thought this meant I matched. 
When the pictures were sent home, as they were every year, in that big white envelope, I stared back at the face peering at me... and that's when it happened. That's when I knew for sure: I was ugly. 
It was the comparison of the beautiful girls beside me. Hair in ribbons and their pretty coordinating outfits ironed and perfected. It was the day I realized that my hair would never be sleek and shiny or blonde. It was the day I knew that my features would always be bigger or smaller, while friend's features would always be more lovely, more feminine, more anything than what I could ever be. 
So I carried that with me. For years and years. I was ugly. Maybe someday, I would be a swan. But not anytime soon. I was surely the Ugly Duckling.
So when a dear friend of mine asks me to resolve to be thankful for my body this year, with all its nuances and its imperfections and its perfectly crafted pieces, I balk. I don't think I can do that. Loving others comes so naturally to me... but loving ME? That's always a resolution for next year. 
When another dear friend suggests I write a blog on whether "looks" matter in relationships, I tell her that I am most definitely the LAST person to be writing that post. 
When I'm knee deep in a conversation with a mommy friend of mine, and we're discussing the doubt in my soul regarding so many things related to beauty... she stops me mid-sentence and says, "What are you afraid of?" 
What am I afraid of. 
Here's the raw answer to that. I'm afraid of two things: 
1. I will miss the beauty that is right in front of me.  2. I will never be found beautiful. 
Whew. There's vulnerable for you :)
I suddenly had this burning desire to know- what is beautiful? and does is matter?
I say it often enough about nearly every single person I know, every piece of scribbled children's art, the pouring out of emotion, the sunsets that make me gasp, the conversations I have with friends. It has never been difficult for me to find beauty in everything I know. I'm prone to finding beauty. 
But what is beauty outside the eye of the beholder?
What is beauty when it is separated from the shiny magazine covers and the billboard ads, the television sit-coms and the computer screens in a midnight bedroom?
What is beauty when seen through the lens of the gospel, and nothing less?
I don't have all the answers. and I will never claim to. 
But I do know this: Jesus spent his earthly time and energy teaching His people to turn a kingdom of classes into a kingdom of completion. His concern and interest was in the poorest, the lowest, the outcast AND the richest, the most corrupt, the most beautiful. 
So how do we blend these?
Here's the argument I'd like to make. Where beauty is concerned, I don't care if you're swimming in money, wear designer everything, and get your hair cut and colored every six weeks. And I don't care if you're living paycheck to paycheck, have a week's worth of outfits, and throw your unruly hair into a pony-tail every day. If we are not satisfied with the self we have been given, if we do not love the self that was made just for us... we are exercising serious ungratefulness toward the perfect God who created us in His perfect image. 
And I would like to add this, which seems equally important to me: when we choose to reject what God has called beautiful in others, even if we ourselves do not find it instantly attractive, we are denying what God has perfectly created in them. 
When I call that fifth grade picture ugly, I look at the imago dei, the image of God, and I curse what He has called good. 
When I look with a critical eye in the mirror tonight as I wash my face and brush my teeth, I curse what He has called good. 
*Hear me loud and clear when I say that simply because God called it good does NOT mean that it hasn't been broken by the fall. There is a brokenness that comes with each day spent in the human realm, doing its best to hang onto our souls like a trained monkey. But sometimes, we chain that monkey to our own back. We feast our eyes on even more brokenness, even more corruptness... in hopes that we can attain what? More brokenness? WHY?! Okay, rant over.*
So, do looks matter? 
Yes. Oh, my goodness, yes they do. 
Praise Jesus they do. Praise Jesus that He put us here on earth with a garden to tend. and I pray that we tend it well. I pray that we tend our own plot well and I pray we are attentive to the plots of others. Praise Jesus that He created different sizes and shapes and colors and genders. Praise Jesus for His relentless creativity in design. Praise Jesus that we find anything lovely at all. 
Paul says in Philippians, "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Oh, I pray I am able to find beauty wherever I find these things. 
So, do looks matter?
No. No, they just really don't. 
No, they don't matter here on earth where we will all grow giant bellies or waste away to nothing, where the grey hair eventually goes white or disappears completely, where wrinkles grow exponentially, boobs sag, and strength fails. 
Beauty is so fleeting, so temporal. A vapor. 
Gone. 
Even more so, looks don't matter because one day everyone who has made a home for Christ in their hearts will be worshipping at His feet. Everyone. That means every sag, every wrinkle, every mark, every love-handle. Every perfect nose, every straight tooth, every sculpted muscle, every six-pack abdomen. Every health nut and every couch potato, every beauty queen and every street child. We will sit and worship Him. Together. 
My fourth grade me, and my twenty-one year old me. My best version of me and my worst version of me. My joyful reflection of Him and my mirror's sickening reflection of me. All of it will glorify Him when it is transformed into perfection. 
So, I realized this: the question is so much more than What is Beautiful? or Do Looks Matter? 
The question I should be asking is, Am I valuing what God values in me and what God values in others?
No matter what that fifth grade picture instilled in me, He is the standard of my beauty. 
And the real raw beauty in that overwhelms me. There is nothing good in me but what He has redeemed for His glory. So I get to be the ugly duckling that was claimed even in my ugliness. He didn't wait for my inner swan to appear. He's not waiting for some "future me" to materialize. He's not looking for me to match a magazine spread. He's not even looking for me to match the wealth and beauty that lives down the street. 
He's after me being aware of the depth of what He's done in me. Through me. With me. 
For His glory. And His alone. 
He's after me seeing Him in the mirror.