We must teach women how to return to Beauty.
As a women's portrait photographer for 20 years, I pay attention to the spirit of Beauty everywhere I go.
And I've been sad, frustrated, righteously angry at what I've seen...
Little girls getting their lips filled, breast augmentations, purchasing skincare that burns their youthfulness away, immersing themselves in a consumption addicted model of beauty.
Women of all ages going from over-sexualizing their bodies for validation to the opposite end of the spectrum: putting their beauty and their sensuality on lockdown in a prison. Women being bombarded with messages that youthful-looking-beauty is more valuable, pressure to get the next procedure to make us look 10-years younger.
Men becoming as rare as an animal on the extinction watchlist, lacking their own fathers, overbearing mothers, timid to lead us because of constant backlash and hatred of their gifts and strengths as men.
All of this, because we've forgotten (or were never taught) the true value of divine Beauty.
For the sake of our daughters and their daughters, and the sanity of men, we've reached a pivotal point in our society where we have to make a choice whether we will continue to indulge in society's version of beauty, or realize the deeper hidden miracles in our Creator's version of Beauty…
In today’s letter, I’m outlining 3 things:
The dark side of society’s version of beauty
What God’s divine Beauty is
The Fast: The process of embodying God’s Beauty
1. The dark side of society’s version of beauty.
This will be heavy for 2 seconds, but bear with me 🐻
There’s a spirit that has made it’s mission to take hold of the incredible Beauty God made each one of us to be as women.
This spirit is like a scavenger, lurking around and waiting for the perfect moments to pour insecurity, comparison, scarcity, and fear inside of our minds and hearts on a daily basis.
This spirit wants us to be obsessed with never feeling good enough.
This spirit highlights enlarged pores, nose bumps, and cellulite as “problems”.
This spirit wants our daughters to forget who they are.
This spirit wants to take every last piece of divinity and purity out of us.
This spirit wants to confuse us.
This spirit wants us to take our eyes off of God.
I say this to not create fear, but awareness. But the good news is, when we learn to see God’s higher perspectives, these menacing spirits look like cartoons, and their attempts seem almost comical.
However, not every woman is able to know and see this perspective, and often we forget ourselves. Many of us sometimes feel these “desires” to “be more beautiful” or to “consume the next beauty product or procedure” in order to make us feel more beautiful.
“Being more beautiful” is often a fantasy for women that has no destination, no end-point, and a lot of us are left wanting to fill a hole that can only be filled with the love and admiration of our God.
This temptation of fantasizing a “perfectly beautiful life, face, and body” can lead to us obsessing about:
The social media feeds of women showing us their picture-perfect life and beauty routines
The fashion and makeup hauls of endless new products
The new generational or seasonal trend
The non-invasive procedures
The extremely invasive procedures
The toxins
All for the world’s definition of “beauty”
But wait, there’s more…
Just when we remember that it’s God who created all things, I ask myself “where’s the line between enjoying something we think is beautiful, and needing to fill a hole in our hearts and minds to “make us more beautiful”…
That’s the million dollar question, and the exact question I know God wants us to ask Him…because that’s exactly the place we will find Him.
2. What God’s divine Beauty is.
When it’s hard to tell where the line between healthy desire for beautiful things, and unhealthy desire for what we “think” is beautiful, we are invited to become closer to God’s heart and his intention for our lives as the Divine Holders of His Beauty.
Pray it with me “God, show me the unique beauty that you made me to be. Show me the places in my life where I attempt to create beauty from my own will and flesh, and show all the places where I confuse worldly beauty for your Beauty.”
One day in 2022 I was in prayer about my future love life, and God showed me a vision:
He showed me what it looked like for him to receive my beauty every time he saw me, and here are the things he’s highlighted to me since that day:
Purity: I used to think it was my sole job and responsibility to be “pure”, but after a long time of meditating on this, I’ve come to learn that purity is a gift I would receive if I kept my heart desiring Him before everything else. Purity has come when I’ve been willing to be washed/cleansed of things in my heart that are tarnished from past experience, pain and disappointment. He makes me pure, and when I am more pure, I carry a lightness to me that others can feel when they’re around me. It eventually also becomes a gift to others.
Strength: I began to see my past experiences as anchors for strength rather than something to be shameful or disappointed by. With time, healing, and right perspective, all past negative experiences can turn into places for wisdom to flow from. For that, I began to see myself as a strong woman, and the beauty in this could have only come from what I’ve uniquely been through.
Knowing: I realized over time that the more women around me who knew their worth, value, and identity in Christ, the more I would know about mine. This wasn’t something I developed alone in my prayer closet. I now believe that we will not truly know how incredible we are as His daughters unless we are surrounded and influenced by other women who are a few steps ahead of us on their journey.
Vitality of my body temple: Holy Spirit can flow through me better if my body temple is working properly. That means, being mindful of the foods I eat, the environments I’m in, and if I’m allowing my body to do it’s natural processes of “living”…that is, taking in the right things, eliminating the right things it the way it needs ☺️ While every season’s routines are different, I educated myself on how my body works and create routines that work in harmony with that, rather than against it. Holy Spirit can’t use me if my body is slow, tired, full of toxins, and overloaded with stress.
Inner feminine radiance: I continued to ask God “what is getting in the way from me accepting the full beauty of who I am as a woman?” This forced me to look at the ways I was rejecting my own feminine gifts: my natural beautiful characteristics, my unique personality traits, my love languages, as well as addressing any rigid religious rules I was putting on myself that had nothing to do with God. When I have looked to the world to show me what is beautiful, I’ve learned that the only one who has been able to show me the truth about my unique beauty, is God, my Creator.
Overflow of love: With all of these things combined, as feminine women, our greatest gift to the world, the body of Christ, our children, our men, is our capacity to hold and express love in ways only we can. And I’ve learned this goes far beyond just my physical beauty, my overflow of love happens when I am focused on serving the people in front of me. I work best 1-on-1 when I can be fully present with someone, that is where I find the most joy and my heart overflows in ways I can hardly explain 💕
All of these things exist only because they are a direct reflection of the Lord’s Radiance, and the closer I am to Him, I reflect more of these Divinely Beautiful qualities to other women and men around me.
This is God’s true design for Beauty.
And you can’t find this in the newest makeup trend. In fact, some women who remain close to God and wear no makeup, and regular “non fashionable” clothing have sometimes been the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen and met.
As a photographer, I get the honor of seeing far beyond the physical beauty of a woman I’m working with, but I get to see her entire spirit, the reflection of the Lord through her heart and beingness.
This is what we have to teach each other.
This is what we have to teach our daughters.
And it’s when we discover what God’s true Beauty is, can we understand the line between healthy desire for beautiful things, and unhealthy attachments to what we “think” is beautiful in the world.
3. The process of embodying God’s Beauty.
The ultimate glow-up happens when we’re willing to let go of everything we think is beautiful, that has been given to us by the world.
Yes, that means the nails. The hair extensions. The botox.
The seasonal fashion sprees. The teeth whitening.
You’re probably thinking, “girl you are crazy, I will never give these up, you’re going way too far”…
But, this isn’t about rebelling against “beauty” practices, it’s about a Reset.
What would happen if you stopped getting your nails done for a few months?
What would happen if you released attachment to hair extensions?
What would happen if you wore the same clothes for an entire year?
What would happen if…
I bet (and I’ve experienced exactly this) that God will show you something deeper about your own Beauty (that you couldn’t see when you were attached to getting your nails done).
This is what I call a beauty fast.
There were some seasons a few years back where I simply couldn’t afford to get my nails done. I’d stopped getting my lashes done and was feeling all sorts of insecurities about how fat I thought my eyes were. I told people I looked like a filipino boy without my lashes. Harsh, I know, a little funny too, but it’s where I was.
But six months after I released my attachment to those lashes, I began getting compliments from men about how beautiful my eyes were. I heard God speak to me in my prayer time about the uniqueness of my eyes, my beauty in general, and he worked to melt away those insecurities day by day.
I’ve had girlfriends go on beauty fasts, releasing their need for hair extensions, hair dye, botox. They could feel it in their heart that God was asking them to return to something more simple and profound about their own Beauty.
If you decide to do this for yourself…on the other side of this fast, is something so incredibly Beautiful that none of us ever see coming…
For me, on the other side of my fast, it was like seeing heaven for the first time.
I can’t explain exactly what you’ll see and experience on the other side of your beauty fast, but I can tell you that it will be a big deal, and it will change your whole outlook on what is beautiful and what is not.
Your sense of self and identity in Christ will deepen. It will widen all throughout your whole body. You’ll feel this knowing in your hips and you’ll appreciate every single lump, curve, and wrinkle.
And then…
From this place, when you choose to participate in a beauty practice, ritual, or routine…it will be from this new place of depth.
This is embodiment. This is the descent of the love you have for yourself within your own body, and the knowing of how Beautiful you truly are in God’s design and in his eyes.
You’ll have arrived and returned to your true place of Beauty.
My final invitation is this…
We must teach women how to return to true beauty, and in order to do that, we must allow ourselves to release the things that are not true beauty first.
God says to us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. (Commentary) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Commentary)”
– Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV
There is a hidden piece of wisdom on the other side of a beauty fast: God will show you things about yourself, the world, and the true value of the feminine from His point of view.
And I promise you, it's a wonderful point of view 👑
I’d love to hear your thoughts and feelings about today’s letter, and if you decide to do this, please share your revelations along the way! I love you so much.
Xo,
LNP
P.S. If you haven’t already, I’d love for you to join me in my free eBook “Heart-Centered Feminine Communication”. Sometimes on this journey of discovering our femininity, we need help shifting from “being in our heads” all day to “being in our hearts”. This eBook will help you with just that. You can click here to download instantly.