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D e b b i e D a r t t
- Debbie
"Cosmetologically Challenged "
I am cosmetologically challenged. I can barely brush my own hair and if it weren’t for my 23 year old daughter and a whole bunch of YouTube advice I wouldn’t actually know how to apply make-up at all. I also struggle in the area of wardrobe, this may be because of my aversion to shopping. Shopping is akin to root canal for me. My husband will come shopping with me just because he knows for me to bring home any new clothes he will have to force me to buy them. He has literally taken things that I tell him I shouldn’t get and he will put it on the counter and buy it anyway. I’m actually glad he does, because if it wasn’t for that I would probably have to wear clothes that I’ve had since college. That would be a bad thing because short of a miracle there is no way I would fit into those clothes.
My short comings in beauty and fashion don’t mean I don’t want to have a great wardrobe or look like someone from the cover of a magazine. In fact I stress over what to wear. I worry that I have already worn an outfit way to often, or that it makes me look fat or old or out of style. I wash, blow dry, straighten or curl my hair. I use hair product and make-up. I spend hours daily in the pursuit of looking good, or at least looking acceptable. I color my hair to cover gray (probably not often enough) and I have even just started wearing contact lenses.
For someone with my aversion to such things, why spend all of the time, energy and resources on my appearance? Based on storefronts, magazines and quite honestly, the way all of my friends always look so put together, I have to assume I am not the only one who frets about such things.
But 1 Peter 3:3-4 says: “Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.”
Not sure where I would fall on that gentle and quiet scale. You’d probably have to ask my husband, or maybe not. Gentleness and peace (quiet spirit) are both fruit of the spirit, qualities that are produced as we allow him to live, work and move through us. When we let go of our concerns for social norms and pressures to live up to someone else’s standards of beauty, wealth and success, his spirit is free to produce unfading beauty from within.
I may not be able to brush my own hair, paint my own nails or even curl my own eyelashes (yes, guys that is a thing). But cosmetologically challenged or not, through his spirit he produces peace and gentleness and the unfading inner beauty that he defines as attractive.
blog 4/23/16
Debbie Dartt Ministries © 2016