"Average"?

Sometimes I worry that I'm not good enough. Especially in the area of physical appearance. Even for a guy that's looking for a good Christian girl, he still won't really want to be with her if she's not good-looking too, right? I mean, let's be honest. Of all the weddings and engagements I've witnessed in the past few months (and there have been a lot), they all involve pretty girls. Maybe I'm just friends with a ton of good looking people (a definite possibility). Or maybe it's that guys are looking for women that are first Godly, and second... pretty.

I don't know. That's what it seems like sometimes.

God's not going to give you someone to marry that you're not physically attracted to. I'm a firm believer of that. But that does make me feel second-rate sometimes. Like... Jesus isn't enough. Like... to be someone's wife I have to have Jesus AND be physically attractive, visually pleasing, the kinda girl a guy is excited to have on her arm because he knows she turns heads.

Now, that's a lie if I ever heard one. Jesus is enough. Period.

But you know, I understand the "physically attractive" thing. I wouldn't want to marry someone that I didn't find physically attractive. But honestly, a person is way more attractive to me after I get to know his heart. That's what makes him beautiful to me. Is that the way guys see it, too? Can't say that's the way I've been raised. My mom always instilled this belief in me that guys are visual creatures and so I need to dress in a way that doesn't mess with their imaginations. Which is true. But I guess it kind of had this residual effect that made me believe guys only notice pretty girls. Only want pretty girls. Only marry pretty girls. And the average ones are just left behind.

Not that I want a guy to pursue me because of the way I look... but what girl doesn't want to feel pretty every now and then? And what girl doesn't struggle with body image at some point in her life? I really hate that I struggle with this, especially since I know the truth. I just have trouble believing it sometimes... but I do want to be honest about my struggles. I've lived too much of my life hiding behind masks and walls. I don't want to go back to that.

You know what, though? There wasn't anything spectacular about Jesus' physical appearance. Isaiah 53 is a prophetic passage written long before Jesus was even born, but it predicts elements of His death on the cross and how He would bear the iniquities of the world for our redemption. One verse in particular is interesting to me -- Isaiah 53:2b says, "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him." (NIV)

Jesus was average when it came to physical appearance. Nothing about Him made Him stand out or look like anything amazing to anyone. Yet He was entirely above average in every other way -- He was God, after all. His Father didn't worry about giving Jesus an amazing body by the world's standards... Jesus was fully equipped to do the job that the Father assigned to Him, and a perfectly sculpted, attractive body was not included in that list of requirements.

Yet His body was still beautiful because it was the living sacrifice that bore our sin, bore the wrath of the Father for us. It was broken for us. It was beautiful in a way that very few people recognized. It may not have been attractive by the world's standards, but it was good enough for the Son of God... and that's saying something.

I pray that I can keep this in mind and remember that if Jesus' average, not-spectacular body was good enough for the Son of God to dwell in, then surely my body is good enough for me to dwell in until Jesus calls me home. God gave this one to me for a reason after all. And you know... if Jesus' body was average by the world's standards, then having an average appearance makes me more like Jesus, if even in a small, inconsequential way... which is something to be grateful for.

Father... please make me beautiful by Your standards, not by the world's nor my own.