Beautiful Things
I am a girl. Surprise!
In my youth (AKA middle school), I liked mostly guy stuff (having 8 brothers kind of helped that). I wore mostly gym shorts and tshirts and ran around and scraped my knee or whatever you do in 6th grade. I didn't dislike girly things, in fact, I tried my hand at make-up and Abercrombie clothes due to middle school peer pressure. But at the end of the day, I went back to playing soccer in the backyard with my bros and wearing my hair in a ponytail cause ain't nobody got time to do hair.
By the time I rolled around into high school, I started dressing more feminine, though, being homeschooled and all, most days I lounged around in gym clothes still. But when I went out, I did my best to wear nicer, more stylish clothes. And as I grew in age, my love for clothing and dressing nice and wearing some make-up grew with me. Also, my love for doing my hair and shopping and Target.
In the last couple of months, I've been praying a lot about detachment. When I lived in New York, I was doing the whole #missionarylife thing, and had basically $0 a lot of the time (but I was very well taken care of, so it didn't matter). I just didn't have a lot of money to buy new clothes or new things. So detachment was easy. Staying away from Target was easy. Let's be honest, going into Target when you have no money is just downright depressing, if you ask me.
Then I came home, back to the land of being paid, and I could buy some of the things that Target had to offer me. Living across the street from Target doesn't really help me to detach myself...But I digress.
Anyways, the point I'm trying to arrive at here is that God made good things. He made beautiful things. And it's OK to like beautiful things. It's not OK to go crazy and be irresponsible or let love for them consume you. Prudence and temperance are both virtues. But I think something that I've been praying on is that yes, detachment is important and necessary and good. But so are beautiful things, and things that help you feel beautiful, like nice dresses or a certain shade of eye shadow or lilies for your office. I think that God is glorified in beauty, real beauty. Beauty is not superficial, and it is manifested in different ways. Some times that way is through a pretty dress and some times it's through a habit or some times it's through a smile or a laugh or a sacrifice. It isn't always outward appearances, but it CAN be outward appearances.
God made good things. He made good people who make good things and those things aren't supposed to be first things, but to drive us to glorify the First Thing.
SO, I am going to stop feeling bad about liking beautiful things.
In my youth (AKA middle school), I liked mostly guy stuff (having 8 brothers kind of helped that). I wore mostly gym shorts and tshirts and ran around and scraped my knee or whatever you do in 6th grade. I didn't dislike girly things, in fact, I tried my hand at make-up and Abercrombie clothes due to middle school peer pressure. But at the end of the day, I went back to playing soccer in the backyard with my bros and wearing my hair in a ponytail cause ain't nobody got time to do hair.
By the time I rolled around into high school, I started dressing more feminine, though, being homeschooled and all, most days I lounged around in gym clothes still. But when I went out, I did my best to wear nicer, more stylish clothes. And as I grew in age, my love for clothing and dressing nice and wearing some make-up grew with me. Also, my love for doing my hair and shopping and Target.
In the last couple of months, I've been praying a lot about detachment. When I lived in New York, I was doing the whole #missionarylife thing, and had basically $0 a lot of the time (but I was very well taken care of, so it didn't matter). I just didn't have a lot of money to buy new clothes or new things. So detachment was easy. Staying away from Target was easy. Let's be honest, going into Target when you have no money is just downright depressing, if you ask me.
Then I came home, back to the land of being paid, and I could buy some of the things that Target had to offer me. Living across the street from Target doesn't really help me to detach myself...But I digress.
Anyways, the point I'm trying to arrive at here is that God made good things. He made beautiful things. And it's OK to like beautiful things. It's not OK to go crazy and be irresponsible or let love for them consume you. Prudence and temperance are both virtues. But I think something that I've been praying on is that yes, detachment is important and necessary and good. But so are beautiful things, and things that help you feel beautiful, like nice dresses or a certain shade of eye shadow or lilies for your office. I think that God is glorified in beauty, real beauty. Beauty is not superficial, and it is manifested in different ways. Some times that way is through a pretty dress and some times it's through a habit or some times it's through a smile or a laugh or a sacrifice. It isn't always outward appearances, but it CAN be outward appearances.
God made good things. He made good people who make good things and those things aren't supposed to be first things, but to drive us to glorify the First Thing.
SO, I am going to stop feeling bad about liking beautiful things.
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