Beauty

So we'll see how this goes...depending on how well I keep my thoughts organized. I feel really tired and my thoughts are all over the place, but I want to post.
So I have been thinking a lot about beauty lately. Well, I never really stop thinking about it... I am a woman.
Growing up I thought that as I got older I would gain more self esteem and know who I am. However, I often feel like I haven't grown at all. I still struggle with body image as I did at the age of 10. I am coming to realize that almost every woman I know has struggled or struggles in this area. This is so frustrating! I am currently seeing a counselor through our church and we got into this discussion last night. Satan especially attacks women's beauty because we are the image of God. There is something about the beauty of women that he hates. I can't really figure it out. What would it look like if we believed we were beautiful and said good bye to our complexes? What would we be able to do that Satan hates so much?
So Julie and I discussed how our choices to believe truth about beauty will impact the young women around us. For example, her daughter--- if I have daughters--- and any young girls that I am currently around. If there is one thing that I would really like it would be to save a girl from the pain of feeling insignificant and ugly. It would be teaching her to renounce the lies. So how do we do this? How do we live in such a way that demonstrates beauty and the renouncing of the world's version? I really don't know. I try to think about the way I grew up and what impacted me to develop eating disorders. I suppose it was the constant comments of beautiful Hollywood women. Look at them...they're perfect and yet I know they feel fat and insignificant. No one would starve themself because they felt beautiful already. However, as a child I didn't realize that. I just figured they were made that way and God messed up with me.
Maybe it was the comments made when I made my order at the fast food restaurants. I wish that if she didn't want me to order a hamburder she shouldn't have taken me to Burger King. (We all know who "she" is).
I think beauty is expressed by the women that men choose. I knew a woman who after her second child gained a significant amount of weight and she had a hard time losing it. Her sons dated very beautiful and thin women. It made her really sad to see this. I didn't know how to console her and I still wouldn't know how.
I also started thinking today about the ways in which I choose to exercise and stay healthy. I often try to imagine the way I would like to look and I get in that mode and I will run until I feel like I can't think anymore. Yeah not so healthy. However, it's been the way I handle these issues since I was a young girl. So I started doing yoga. I like the way that it is a relaxing way to keep your body in shape. It really helps me to clear my head and focus on myself rather than having heightening my stress level.
I would also like to add that I have been the healthiest in this area since I met David. He refused to let me bring make up to Guatemala and he has constantly covered me with words of encouragement about how he sees me. He never comments on the beauty of another woman...not even if I say it first. He usually comments on the ugliness of their emanciated bodies. Since knowing him I was able to drop all the methods that I used to stay thin... which can cause stress just as him not smoking can cause stress on him.
So en fin... I would just like us all to be aware of the beauty scandals and to remind ourselves about the truth God wants us to believe about beauty. I would also like you all to go to this website and watch this video that Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" shows. http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/flat4.asp?id=6909
May we fight for God's desire for us to truly know beauty.