Featured on Behold-Her Beauty blog, with Deborah Ruthford in November, 2023. Check her website out here.
“Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.”
Proverbs 31:10
I hold my nine-month-old daughter’s frame close to me and utter the words, “You are beautiful.” She smiles big and curls her solid little body right into mine—forehead to forehead, nose to nose, with just a hint of wet lips brushing my nostrils. She couldn’t have understood what I just said, but she knows.
She recognizes the expression that spills forth matching my words and she knows she is beautiful.
So sweet, innocent, and pure.
We each understand this from the time we are intricately woven, and miraculously joined, hedged in, protected, and defended within the marvelous design of our mother’s womb. We know this from the point we are born right into our mother’s loving arms. We know we are highly valued before we ever look into a mirror.
Yet life has a way of contaminating that innocence—God’s holy intention. It has a way of shaming us for believing we were born exactly who we were meant to be, completely adored and loved. It has a way of making us believe we can never measure up.
The problem is, we cannot deny our wounds without denying ourselves the abundant life God intends for us.
As a child, I felt lost in the shuffle, trodden by shame. I hid my shame by hiding the real me. Most people got to know me on the surface, while I skillfully kept them at a distance.
The problem is, we cannot deny our wounds without denying ourselves the abundant life God intends for us. When we run from our pain, we run from God— the source of truth, goodness and beauty.
How do we break the cycle of believing in the light what shame convinces us of in the dark? Somewhere deep inside, we know the truth. We know we are highly valued by God. We know this deep down, yet struggle to believe. We quickly learn to seek our value and affirmations from outside sources.
Proverbs 31:10 describes a different kind of woman, however. Hers is the character a mother instructs her son to seek after in a wife. Her worth is more costly than rubies. When we read down the list of this woman’s actions, it seems impossible to live up to. Yet her virtuous acts do not make her virtuous. This woman is already virtuous before she ever acts virtuously. She is a woman who understands her worth in Christ and trusts him completely.
The Hebrew word, hayil, describes virtue as strong, courageous, and rich in wisdom. God has intended each of us to be this virtuous woman, not because we can do it all, but because we understand where our strength, courage, and wealth in wisdom comes from. When we completely entrust our lives to God, we are that virtuous woman who, like rubies, is a rare and valuable find.
What if rather than striving for beauty on the surface, we begin the work of excavating the beauty that already exists within?
Rubies, like all gemstones, are formed under extreme heat and pressure below the earth. One must excavate to discover it. Anything created to look like it on the surface will be synthetic.
What if rather than striving for beauty on the surface, we begin the work of excavating the beauty that already exists within? What if we bring to the light the shame that thrives in darkness and seek the true gem that has become more beautiful with time and through trials. What if we peeled back the layers of pain to discover the purposes we were created for?
Through the excavation process we can begin to heal. That is what journaling honest pages did for me. Drawing out vulnerable emotions and experiences revealed unidentified wounds and through it, God’s nearness became apparent. Little by little, his words became like poetic embers drawing me to his warmth, and into the light of his presence. Not until I stopped covering up my shame could I sit with vulnerability, and allow God to refine me, layer by layer.
Like the tiny facets of a gemstone reflecting light from the sun back to our eyes, when we turn our face toward Christ, we are like mirrors reflecting his radiance.
We are not exempt from suffering in this life. Yet through it, we will be refined into who we were created to be—a virtuous woman, more costly than rubies.
Today will you trust God to peel back another layer within your soul and continue the excavation process? Will you completely trust him as he draws you near and whispers, “You are beautiful?”
