For the ladies

I think I've been feeling particularly self-conscious lately. It's funny because as a Christian woman I feel like it's something I should just make go away- there's really no place for self-centred meditation in a humble heart-but in terms of 'making it go away' I'm not doing a very good job. It doesn't seem to matter how often (or not) I look in a mirror or how deliberately I distract my thoughts (foolishly prayer is not always my first defence!) walking through the city to uni, or driving to work or logging in to facebook only seems to highlight how all around me are pictures of beautiful, perfect, charismatic, funny, confident women and it's just intimadating. Instead of encouraging individuality the world around me seems to be promoting perfection-something I neither long nor strive for.
What to strive for though? I don't find my beauty in my outward appearance, in fact I consider it somwehat a blessing I'm not ridiculously good looking-what a can of worms that opens for women who want to reflect God's impressive design- but I don't really have a firm picture of what it is I am longing for. Instead I opt for the cheap alternative-the desire to disappear into the crowd of ordinary women who in their everyday don't search for change or difference or orginality but rather to keep up with the proverbial Jones's. Even the Jones's were more original then that.
A gentle and quiet spirit I think. That's biblical, let's run the idea.Barbara Hughes is the gun when it comes to this, her passage on this in Disciplines of a Godly Woman is the best description I've come across-

Gentleness, or meekness as many translations have it, isn't a weakness or spinelessness or timidity or even niceness. This word in classical Greek was used to describe tame animals, soothing medicine, a mild word and a mild breeze. It is a word with caress in it.
Gentleness also implies self-control. Aristotle said that gentleness is the mean between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness. So the person who is gentle is able to balance his anger. He controls it. Meekness/gentleness is strength under control. (pg 153)

An awesome exegesis, and on some levels a great answer to the question of what I should be striving for. On the other hand it is difficult to use it as an answer to the unfufillment felt when your reflection doesn't reflect the way you want it to. If a friend told me she felt that she looked ugly it would be difficult for me to justify how controlling your anger makes you beautiful. Perhaps that's a flaw in the society I work in, or the way I think, perhaps the way I WOULD respond is unbiblical. I'm very willing to be wrong.
Perhaps though there are two ways to break this chain of thought. I can't pretend it'll go away by a stream of pathetic distractions, that will probably only heighten my issue by refraining to agknowledging it as important.
1) Meditating on how beautiful GOD is. I love reading Job 38, Genesis 2 and Ps 33 for this. How impressive God's creation and sovereignty is! We are the pinnacle of God's creation, warts, pimples, bad hair days, overweight, underweight, foul-speaking, foul-smelling and all. He delights in us. He thinks we're beautiful. He creates great natural beauty, oceans and mountains and sunrises and rainforests and he prizes US because beauty reaches it's pinnacle in RELATIONSHIP. Look at Jesus' s prayer for his disciples in John 17. So beautiful, not because it contains rhetoric, symmetrical phrasing or other intelligent techniques but because it is heartfelt. A sunset is beautiful, but a friend is more so. A clear night sky is beautiful but more so is a bride. We make manifest God's beauty.
2) By actually nutting out what makes me ugly and beautiful on the inside. Sure my hair looks feral but my thoughts are worse. Sure my dress is mishapen but my lack of prayer is far more abhorrent to the sight of God. Ask for forgiveness-not to be beautiful for yourself before God but that God might be seen as more beautiful by others. That is, after all, what we are all about.
What should I strive for? God's beauty. And if he uses me to portray even a glimpse of that how blessed am I.