Age and beauty

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewellery or fine clothes.  Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 1 Peter 3v 3.

Two things have happened in my life recently.  First; I hit a significant birthday and second; my  eight year old daughter was involved in a local gala event.  Both of these events have made me think again about image and beauty.  My age has crept up on me; it seems only a minute ago that I was a fresh faced teenager but suddenly, or so it seems, my hair is greying and the wrinkles are starting to show.  The world around me is telling me that it matters that I look older, that, especially as a woman, my value is reduced because I am no longer young and beautiful.  Recent newspaper articles have discussed how older women disappear from our TV screens, newsreaders and actresses alike.  Is it true?  Am I less of a person because of my age and fading outward appearance?

My daughter is at the very start of her life as a young woman.  It is wonderful to see her simple enjoyment in life itself.  The joys of riding her bike, climbing trees and yes, of enjoying beautiful clothes. When it comes to getting dressed up for the gala though; should she have her nails done, her hair at the hairdressers, wear heeled shoes?  What does it tell her about herself if we as her parents,as well as the world around her, focus on her outward appearance?  But is it wrong to want to look good or to wear pretty clothes?

It is clear to me that the world is wrong on this issue.  God values me whatever my age or whether I am externally beautiful in the eyes of other human beings or not.  He made me and ultimately He loved me so much He sent His son to die for me.  However, He also made me a woman and one who happens to enjoy pretty clothes and 'having my hair done'.  Throughout the bible there are many examples of women who are described as externally beautiful.  So, whilst I acknowledge the eternal unimportance of external appearance I also believe that God created the beauty I find in colour, clothes and even having my hair done!  All his gifts are to be enjoyed with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4v4).

Reading the above passage from 1 Peter also helps me with these questions.  The bible is clear that God is more interested in what is going on in our hearts than with external appearance (1 Sam 16 v 7).  So, if we are more focused on our external appearance than the nature of our hearts then we have a worldly perspective and not a Godly one.  But what does it mean to have a gentle and quiet spirit?  Does it mean we need to be women who never speak up, don't have an opinion, sit in the corner? 

Think of the most Godly woman you know; one who speaks kindly and lovingly of and to others, who embodies wisdom in both her life and in her advice to others, who faces infirmity and illness with grace.  Then think of others you know; the ones that are holding on to bitterness, speak of a multitude of regrets in their lives past, who live in fear of the future of old age and infirmity.  The first is a living example of this passage in 1 Peter.  The woman who has a gentle and quiet spirit is a woman who has found rest in and peace with God.  She knows that He is her rock and fortress in times of trouble, that He is the Good Shepherd who is walking with her through life and that He has prepared a room for her in eternity.  She shines with Godly beauty and it is recognisable to those around her.  I thank God for the many women I know who embody this passage to me and pray that by God's grace I may grow to become like them.

Meet the women at Charlotte - Diana

This post marks the next in a series of interviews with different women who are part of the Charlotte Chapel family.  We hope to allow you to hear a little about the different lives we live, what makes us tick and how we seek to grow in our faith.  This time, we would like you to meet Diana.

Q: Thank you for sharing some of your story Diana. Could you tell us your favourite Christian song or hymn so readers can listen while they read on?

A :“Great is the Darkness” by Noel Richards, also known as “Come Lord Jesus”.

Q: Can you tell us how you became a Christian?

A: I don’t ever remember a time when God was not a part of my life.  I grew up in a Christian home and so church was an important part of family life.  I attended an Anglican church which sowed a seed in my heart in accepting Jesus as my Lord and Saviour at around age ten.  Unfortunately there was no real discipleship so it was not until my late teens when I changed churches that I began to truly understand what it meant to be a follower of Christ.

Q: What would be your desert island book? (we'll let you take the Bible of course!)

A: Ooh that is a difficult one.  I do so love to read and belong to a book club.  Probably “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom.

Q. This month in the blog we are thinking about appearance. What do you find challenging about the way the world sees beauty for women?

A. As a Christian I know that I do not have to be enslaved to the world’s idea of beauty. I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God Himself.  However sometimes it is easy to be tempted to fall into the habit of being concerned about worldly beauty and how I match up to that. The world’s perception of beauty however will not take me anywhere. This sort of beauty never satisfies. Proverbs say that it is fleeting (Prov 31:30).

Q: I know you grew up far away from Edinburgh, in Australia. Could you share your earliest memory?

A: While certainly not my earliest memory, learning to swim is a strong childhood memory.  I remember after having properly dived off the blocks and swimming one length of proper freestyle in an Olympic size pool (50m) without stopping, I was given a very special reward. The following day, my mother took me on the train into the Sydney’s city centre to a jeweller’s shop whereby I chose my very first watch! My mother made a grand day of it including a lovely scrumptious lunch at Miss Browns, at Sydney’s famous centrepoint tower. We did not have many family traditions but this was one, I remember very well.  

Q: What is your signature dish in the kitchen?
A: We enjoy practising hospitality, and endeavour to open our home to all sorts of folk.  Pasta Topped Beef Casserole is a favourite.   My dear late friend and fellow worshipper at Charlotte Chapel,   Andrea Maskell would very kindly call me the “Queen of Trifle”. She once asked me if I would make a trifle for Christmas Day celebrations.  My immediate thought was “oh no – I don’t like trifle – it reminds me of boarding school which I did not enjoy very much”.  However, not wanting to let a good friend down, I found an updated Australian trifle recipe with a delicious mascarpone topping.  Making it was a great success and I finally overcame my silly fear of trifle.

Q: Do you have a favourite place in the world to be?

A: If a cold place, then probably Iceland, for we love the beauty and the ruggedness of the landscape – another wonder of God’s creation.  Also my husband Bruce loves to ride the beautiful pure-bred horses there, which are very different to our horses back home. 

If a warm place, then southern Spain, or the Canaries, in particular Lanzarote.  I would of course say Australia but we don’t travel back home as often nowadays.

Q. Can you share a recent encouragement in your faith?

A. A recent general encouragement in my faith with the Lord has been joining the 5 o'clock club, meaning getting up earlier that perhaps I would desire to – not necessarily 5am, more likely 6am and making God my first priority (reading and meditating on His word, lots of prayer, worship and listening).  I have found this to be instrumental in cultivating a daily intimacy with Him and in turn my faith has grown significantly.

Q: Finally, what brings you the greatest joy?
A: I do mentoring and one to ones, both of which I love.  In particular with regard to mentoring, my greatest joy is being used by God to dig out the rubbish and find the treasure within.  It is then pure delight to see folk equipped to live their lives abundantly for the Lord, as we have been called to do. 

Thanks to Diana for sharing some of her story. Do feel free to suggest other women who you would like to get to know through these interviews.

Compared to her

This month on the blog we are looking at the theme of image.  In particular thinking about our attitudes to how we look and what God says about beauty and image.  At our brunch in June we will examine this issue further.  So hopefully our posts this month will start us thinking deeper about this issue and cause us examine our hearts and listen to the truths from God’s word.

As we begin to delve into this issue of image, I want to throw out a couple of questions.  Are you happy with the way you look?  When you look in the mirror do you view your reflection with a sense of contentment or do you instantly focus on all the things you want to change?  How easily to you identify with the following stories?

“I put on an outfit I know I look good in, and I feel great – until I get to the party.  Then I see someone who looks slimmer, or cooler, or classier; suddenly the woman looking at back at me in the mirror looks fat, frumpy and dull.  I just want to go home.”

“I look at photos of myself from decades ago and feel so despondent.  I used to be so much slimmer, with smoother skin and no grey hair.  Mind you at the time I thought I was blobby and had frizzy hair…”

All too familiar aren't they?  And I am positive that all of us have at one time or another struggled, probably even now, with a sense of dissatisfaction and discontentment about how we look.  We can long to look different; slimmer, taller, longer legs, less wobbly arms, straight hair (add your own desire). 

Where does this lack of contentment come from?  Why do we suffer from a desire to change how we look?  There are many reasons which I think contribute to how we might answer that but in this post I want to highlight one which comes from a book by Sophie De Witt called ‘Compared to her’.

In the book Sophie identifies an underlying attitude which can lead to our lack of contentment with regard to how we look.  Thinking back to the stories above, what is at heart of them?  The answer is comparison.  Sophie picks up on the fact that often the dissatisfaction we have with our image, and in fact experience in many others areas of life, comes from the fact we are constantly comparing ourselves to others.  How does my figure match up with hers?  Does she look more or less stylish/cool/effortless than me?  Do I look as good as her without having spent the money she clearly has?  On these measuring scales, do I win, compared to her?  Or lose?

When I compare myself with someone else, why do I do it?  What am I hoping to get out of it?  Sophie identifies three themes that motivate our desire to compare ourselves with others. 

1. I want to know that I’m worthwhile (I want to know I’m significant).
2. I want to know that my life is as good as it could be (I want to be satisfied).
3. I want to know that I've got what I need in life (I want to feel secure).

Essentially we want to make ourselves feel good about how we look.  We want to make sure we look as good, if not better than others so we can feel significant, satisfied and secure. 

But the problem is it doesn't work.  We end up doing one of two things.  We compare ourselves to others and come off worse.  This leads to us feeling inadequate, envious, insecure and full of self pity.  We can be bitter or grumble about how we look.  We no longer love ourselves. 

Or we compare ourselves to others and come off better.  This leads to us feeling proud, arrogant and superior and we no longer love those around us.

In reality we tend to do both.  Each day we look up at others and look down on others, and feel anxious and self-sufficient, guilty and proud, despairing and smug.    I know I do this all the time.  Walking down Princes Street on the way to work I can pass one person and think ‘woah, that’s quite an outfit!  At least I don’t look that.  The next person comes along and I’m now thinking, “wow, isn’t she skinny, I wish I was like that”.  What we don’t feel, at least for any length of time, is the sense of significance, satisfaction or security we are looking for in how we look.

In the book Sophie expands on why we behave like this and looks at many areas of life where we suffer from this problem.  It is not just confined to the area of image.  I would thoroughly recommend reading the book and letting God challenge our hearts. 

But without giving away too much of the end of the book, what is the cure?  How do we stop comparing ourselves to others?   In the end, the cure is wonderfully, challengingly simple – Let God be God.  Our compulsive need to compare comes from pushing God out of the centre of our lives.  So the cure is simply to reverse the way we see the world and ourselves.  We need to restore God to the centre and to find all we need, at each point of our days and in every part of our dreams, in Him.   How do we let God be God?  By remembering and knowing and living out truths the Bible says about who God is and what God says about who I am.  Once I remember who God is and that my identity comes from him, then my satisfaction, significance and security is no longer dependent on the wavering comparisons with those around me.  It becomes dependent on the unchanging opinion of the faithful God.  I can hold on to his promise that I am “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works (Ephesians 2:10).”

A copy of Sophie De Witt's book can be bought from the 10ofthose website by following this link - Compared to her

Learn a new thing

Our next Women's Outreach event is happening on 23rd May at 7.15pm.  

This event is a step on from our outreach socials in March.  On the night there will be plenty of time to chat and get to know new people, but this event will include a time of testimony which will explain something of what God has done in the lives of the ladies demonstrating.  If your friends came to the socials and you'd like an opportunity to open up more gospel focused conversations but still fairly informally, then this would be a great event to invite them too.  

Tickets are free but spaces will be limited.  If you are interested in coming along please speak to Rachel or email womenatcharlotte@gmail.com  Invites are available in electronic format, get in touch if you would a copy.  

We are offering a wider range of  outreach opportunities this year in the hope we will help you find an event which suits your friends interests and where they are spiritually.  We are not expecting people to be at all of them.  If you do have any other ideas of events which might suit you and your friends better, do get in touch.