Now that God had healed my heart regarding the loss of an emotional relationship with my father, I was in a place where I could hear a little bit more clearly the whisper he was speaking to me when I asked him “Am I beautiful?”

So you have a little understanding of where I was at in this moment of time, maybe you can relate to some of the same beliefs.  Because I didn’t have an emotional bond with my father, I didn’t understand what love looked like. My father and I bumped heads a lot and he put me down and called me names.  Later, as I learned my love language (The Five Love Languages – Gary Chapman) was words of affirmation, it made more sense to me as to why his words had such an impact on me.

God designed a father to be an example of love to his daughter; this is why so many women marry men who are just like their father. I believe God created us to have this innate thing within us and we are not always aware of it.  I believe God designed us to be inspired and shaped by our dad, an authoritative, protective role in our lives as little girls.

Guess what, I dated men who put me down, this is all I knew about love.  Also because I didn’t understand the true definition of love, I learned that lust was love. Two deadly combos that I had to battle in my lifetime, the missing standard of what love should look like from a man and the void in my heart of not being adored and loved like a daughter should be loved by her father.   

Any attention I got from men (lust), was enough for me to engage with them and give them my heart to fill it with what I thought was love.  As a result, I learned that in order to earn love, I had to be physically pretty and not just that, but also be the prettiest girl in the room. These men who supposedly “loved” me, loved showing me off on their arm and making every man jealous.  So guess what I invested my time in, being the most “beautiful women” in the room.

I spent so much time and effort at the gym, in salons, being a socialite, indulging in name brands, educating myself to gain the financial means to keep up with all of this. I got attention, I mastered the art of looking amazing on the outside, but I was slowly dying on the inside. It used to be a high for me when men were constantly staring at me and telling me how beautiful I am. It was like a drug, if I didn’t get a compliment when I walked into a room I would be so devastated and would beat myself up by working harder on my external beauty as a result. I can’t believe I am sharing this, but it’s the truth and I have to be transparent. If another girl got more attention than me, I would compare myself to her and be angry at her and completely dismiss any woman that looked like her. I would dismiss a whole culture group of women if they got more attention than me especially if it was coming from my boyfriend.  It saddens me now when I think about how much this was a huge part of my life. It consumed my mind and thoughts, my time, my money and it sucked up all my energy.  I always had a boyfriend, because I always needed someone to validate me and tell me how amazing I was.  I could never be alone to actually face my demons.

So it was this woman with this lifestyle and this background, that was now standing in front of God in a vain kind of way asking “Am I beautiful?”. I use to think to myself how vain was I to ask God such a question? I mean usually, when people approach God, they ask them things like “Why am I here?” or “What is the purpose of life?” and here I am worrying about if God thinks I am beautiful or not.  I asked this question because it is what I asked all my boyfriends when I needed to be told what I thought I needed to hear. So here I am asking God am I beautiful and guess what he answered me.

As we dig deeper into the answer, I will reveal five lessons God showed me about my beauty and how he designed women to be beautiful.

Stay tuned……