This is what Beauty is

The year before it seemed I had leaped forward
Moved toward the places and spaces You'd reserved, just for me.
Yet this one insecurity slowly and secretly takes over me. It's one I've never learned to shake,
one chain that never seems to break.
I find myself face to face with the traces and the scars it leaves, faintly visible from afar.


Does every girl bear the treacherous weight of this burden?
This burden that drags and nags at the depths of your soul,
Convincing you that even the largest paid toll isn't ever going to be enough
to cover the old and make up the new into something perfect; beautiful you.


As I've learned beauty masked will flake and break you fast.
Beauty from the outside looking in pales to the beauty deep within
and beauty covered with bandages, hiding the scars never really was beautiful at all.


What if scars are what defined the beauty we call…Savior?


Simple as it seems, the favor poured out on us was far from the perfection we try to picture.
In fact, the phrase “it is finished,” requires no additions and no renditions.
It was finished when holes were pierced with nails in fierce anger and sneers in spite of prayer.
It was finished when perfection met resurrection after carrying the heaviest burden of them all…
and now making my 'burden' seem terribly small.


How can this be beautiful?
The most wonderful, powerful, merciful and graceful One became like me…
Taking on all the traces and scars I've hidden for none to see.
Yes, those He put on, willingly.


How can this not be beautiful?
Because… These scars are what define the beauty that we call SAVIOR
MAKER, FATHER, CREATOR, PROVIDER, HEALER, REDEEMER, RESCUER, COMFORTER, KEEPER, COUNSELOR, AND MASTER.


So how can I be beautiful?
How am I beautiful?


I am beautiful because of His
Resurrection.


His rising from the dead resurrects my soul.
His waking and walking from the grave awakens me to be made whole.


This is what beauty is… My Savior stepping down from all the glory that was His,
becoming a lowly human, born with no sin,
bearing the burden, wearing the scars from all the faces and the places we've been,
and then resurrecting and ascending to heaven once again.
This allowing us to one day be made beautiful- just as He is.


Now the call for today is to simply say thank you for these scars that make us who we are....
To say thank you for the scars that allow us to know you so close, rather than so far....
And thank you Father,
for These scars are what define the beauty that we call SAVIOR