Beauty is vain.

Ladies, you are beautiful. No, I don't mean once you get dressed up and put on your makeup and do your hair, I am talking about straight out of the bed. You are beautiful. Do you believe that? I know, I don't either. 

I want to believe that I am beautiful without all that. But if I were being honest, the effort I spend in the mornings to make myself look acceptable once I leave the house, proves otherwise. If we believed that we were beautiful without all the additional product, how different would our lives be? How different would we appear - not just physically, but spiritually?

Here I am, in all my morning glory. No make up, bed hair, baggy eyes and all.

Everywhere I look there are women taking pictures of themselves. Beautiful hair, makeup, clothes. They model for us and then post pictures on their facebook, twitter and blog for us to admire (I know I am guilty myself!) Oh, and admire I do... and covet. I wish I had her hair. I wish I could afford that outfit. I wish... I wish...

This does nothing for my heart, but cause discontent. Comparing myself with others, causes me to not be happy with who God has created me to be. It causes me to lose sight of the beautiful way He has knit me together. When I do this, I become dissatisfied with not only myself, but with my Creator.

There is nothing wrong with looking nice. We are, after all, a temple of the Lord and should take care of our bodies. I highly encourage working out and eating healthy. But this culture attacks us in every direction with models, billboards and now... blogs... that are showing us what their perception of beauty is. Hair, fashion and clothing... really?

Let's be real, take off the masks and look ourselves in the mirror. If you can still see yourself as beautiful, then you have overcome the world's lies. If the first thing you think about is how you can style your hair like the girl in the magazine, or blog or pinterest did, then it is my sad belief that you are slowly losing your worth to a false sense of beauty.

I say this in pure love. Ladies, wrap yourselves in the truth of this verse:

Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. Proverbs 31:30