Outward Adornment

I got hit with some conviction last week.

For some backstory, Sam and I were having some youth group kids over our house for a Sunday night dinner/hangout, just to get to know them a bit and provide a cozy, welcoming environment for them to gather. We planned for everyone to make personal pizzas and we had games at the ready. Sam entered it in our calendar as “Teenage Invasion.”

I felt confident in the morning.

7:15 AM. I wake up early enough to do a full get-ready—complete with freshly washed AND freshly iron-curled hair, along with a full face of makeup. I had a cute outfit planned, and, all put together, I feel really good. I also feel extremely productive: I do the laundry, dishes, some general tidying, a light cleaning of the bathroom, and a grocery shopping trip—all while Sam is at church fulfilling his role in the production side of things.

11:40 AM. I’m late to church, by a few minutes, but I got so much done. The house is ready for guests, and so am I. I’m really focused on the Lord during worship. Being in a fairly new church, it’s taken some getting used to being somewhere different, and my mind often wanders looking around at all that is new to me. But this particular day, my mind is so on Jesus.

An assistant pastor gives a message and talks about how, when he was younger, he often made himself look tough and scary just so people wouldn't mess with him, using the analogy of a puffing-up pufferfish. He never actually felt as tough as he made himself seem, but if he looked it, that was all it took to keep himself protected from hurt.

5:00 PM. It’s an hour before the teenagers arrive, most of whom I've never met before, but Sam has. I’m a little nervous. I’m intimidated by teenagers for some reason. They aren’t that much younger than me, yet exist in a completely different stage of life. And not to mention their more recent beauty standards that seem to have raced ahead of where they were when I was a high-schooler. Teen girls seem to be so effortlessly put together. Here I am—my makeup doesn't look as good as it did this morning, my hair didn't quite hold all of the artificial curls I gave it earlier.

I straighten out the hem of my recently-purchased top. Does it look good styled this way? Or is it a poor attempt at being trendy?

I re-powder my shiny forehead, re-brush some mascara on my lashes, and re-blush the apples of my face. Is my mascara clumping? Is the eyeshadow in my crease too dark?

I rake my fingers through my hair, twirling the ends to get them to look like they did before, but they just twirl back to being part-curled, part-bent, and part-straight. I’ll just put it up. I run to my top dresser drawer and snag a scrunchie. I bend myself in half with all my hair hanging down. Gather, gather, scrunchie, fold, scrunchie, fold, twist, fluff, twist, fluff. It’s all wrong: ends sticking out, too much cinching by the scrunchie, bun too tall. Ok, fine, I’ll pull it back. I wave my hand around in my clear tray on the bathroom shelf-rack to find my claw clip. Twist, twist, fold, claw. The curled/bent/straight combo translates to the clipped-up ponytail and looks like the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Ok, FINE. I run to my dresser and hook a hair elastic in my pointer. Loop, twist, pull through, loop, twist, pull through. I turn to catch the reflection of my more traditional pony from the side. My hair looks so thin. It looks like a 3-year-old’s hair.

“Ughh!” I say from the sink. Sam provides some encouragement from the living room. He thinks it looks great. I don’t. I snatch the elastic out of my hair. Let’s try the scrunchie again, low this time. The low messy bun that results is marginally acceptable. It stays.

10:00 PM. Sam and I are nearly asleep. I go over and over in my head why I felt so crappy getting ready, why I put so much worry into what I looked like just for the wildly talkative teenagers to basically entertain themselves most of the night and leave saying they had a great time—helped in no way by my pre-dinner tantrum over my appearance.

Pufferfish.

The word bounced around against the walls of my brain, like the DVD logo during screen-saver mode.

What was I thinking? Did I really have to try to prove myself when there was nothing to prove? Was I really that scared of a couple teenage girls not seeing me as a put-together 22 year-old woman? I may as well be in high school again.

Forgive me, Lord, I prayed. Forgive me for my selfishness.

Not long before I wrote this I was reminded of this piece of Scripture:

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight,” (1 Peter 3:3-4, NIV).

Many people debate these verses (which come from a passage specifically directed towards wives) in the context of modesty and whether its instructions are to be taken figuratively or literally. Whatever your position on this passage, let these words be a valuable reminder, as they were to me. Hair, makeup, jewelry, and clothes aren’t bad, but when they become more important for us to show off than letting the Lord’s character in us speak for itself—or trying to create our own identity instead of letting Christ be our identity—we put ourselves in the dangerous position of being harshly let down. My beauty doesn’t come from my efforts, my beauty comes from my Creator. And that is so hard to walk in sometimes—I won’t lie. But it’s important to remember that I’m not living to please, honor, or worship my culture, my friends, or even a few unfamiliar teenagers in my house. Every seemingly insignificant thing I do should be to honor my Lord who gave me life and created beauty within me by His power and love.