The question instigated an inner dialogue with my younger self and I wondered if there was a pattern that I could trace; something that could give me a lead to the million dollar question in my teenage life, a question I remember having been repeatedly asked from the ages of nine to nineteen; why are most of your friends girls?

Though I am uncertain of how many of you will resonate with my words in this post, I am convicted to open up my heart, representing those sailing/ who have sailed similar waters to me, and to start a discussion with those interested.

Please note that the sole purpose of this post is to firstly, aid all of us, as the Body of Christ, to understand one another better by sharing a singular perspective on friendship that you may not have experienced “so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” 1 Corinthians 12:25, and secondly to encourage us to dig deep, confronting our long-forsaken past insecurities that may be hindering us from moving forward in our present, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed…” Jeremiah 17:14.

Let me start by asking you;

Are most of your friends the same sex as you or the opposite sex?

Mine, for the majority of my life, have predominantly been of the opposite sex. I think it’ll be helpful to give you a background into why I think that has been the case; hopefully some of you will share similar experiences and relate to my story.

Throughout primary school I was mostly friends with other boys out of circumstance, not choice; I have no sisters and wasn’t surrounded by any young female relatives. I attended an all boys primary school and living in Cairo at the time, had very little exposure to girls at church. I do have distinct memories however, of eight year old me purposely avoiding to cross paths with specific boys due to a lack of relatibility. I vividly remember a sleepover with a church friend that left me feeling very ‘different’ to say the least; it was our tradition to play the Lion King PC game, but that evening my friend deemed it a “girls’ game” and we played, what was to me, a boring generic car-racing game instead. Little did I know that this was a glimpse into what I was going to encounter for the next ten or so years of my life.

Migrating to the UK aged 9 highlighted my disinterest in the majority of toys/ activities targeting my age/ sex demographic from the get-go; I could not care less about sports or cars and I certainly preferred drawing in my sketchbook or playing Pokemon Sapphire on my GameBoy Advance SP, than GTA with my brother on ‘our’ PS2. Befriending other males throughout secondary school became an intricate process of elimination; I deeply cherished the few that made me feel understood.

Though my social skills flourished in my teens, I began to embrace my introversion more and more – needing an intimate environment to feel safe. Naturally preferring and seeking long lasting one-on-one friendships, the false ‘revelation’ that I would not receive the intimacy I desired out of a friendship with another guy, was one I quickly believed. Without overly generalizing, I believe that young men struggle with emotional expression due to the hyper-masculine social construct they are born into from the get-go. Large male-dominated friendship groups are preferred over singular brotherhoods at that age as they provide a safety net from raw emotional expression, by masking a boy’s brokenness with quality banter and social hierarchy. In my case, the few male friendships I did harbor, disintegrated as quickly as they were formed.

Insecurity in Masculinity:

Having little in common with the males around me while growing up began to plant a seed of thought that I am not “man enough” for, what I perceived were, masculine tasks/ interests. The words “you’re just different from the other boys” that I had heard oh so often, began to seep into my skin and I had begun to base my entire identity on who I was not, rather than who I was.

Befriending females thus became very simple; since I was not like the other guys, and neither were they (being females themselves), we met on common grounds. I grew tired of the constant feeling of being “less manly” than the company surrounding me. I grew tired of proving my masculinity by faking my interest in subjects and banter that did not stimulate me. I grew tired of it all.

“The more one experiences pressures to “show oneself” and demonstrate masculine competency, the greater the hypervulnerability. The reason is that “showing off” one’s manhood is an emotionally immature process. This manhood is insecure and is based on what one does rather than who one is. Insecure masculinity comprises a set of behaviours driven by fear to prove to the world that one’s manhood isn’t weak, yet these same behaviours can inadvertently increase the feelings of fear they are intended to eradicate.”

– Niobe Way, Adolescent Boys – Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood 

In an oestragen concentrated environment, testosterone is very easy to spot.

And that felt good.

It fed my ego when I was asked questions to understand the perspective of a guy by my female friends. I no longer sought masculine validation from other guys as it was affirmed by the multitude of girls around me. This insecurity in my masculinity grew deeper, cocooning me in a dangerous comfort zone around females, that neither challenged me as a man nor helped me to feel represented.

Though healing low self-esteem/ self-confidence, particularly targeting fragile masculinity as in my case, is a life-long journey, The Lord eases it by His grace.

“…the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” Luke 1:78(b)-79

Though His luminosity exposes our innermost insecurities, instead of condemning us as the world does, The Lord uses His light to illuminate the road of healing for us to walk through, in order to achieve perfect peace with who we are. By exposing our insecurities to our Creator, we learn to humble ourselves in His presence and confess that though we do not posses the power to rid ourselves of our demons, He, the Alpha and Omega, surely does.

“The sick one who is acquainted with his sickness is easily to be cured; and he who confesses that he is in pain is near to health. Many are the pains of the hard heart; and when the sick one resists the physician, his torments will be augmented.”

– St. Isaac the Syrian

Truth rooted in The Word affirms who I am in Christ, rather than who I am not in the world. I begin to comprehend the intensity of The Father’s love for me; how He created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother’s womb (Ps 139:13). Trivial validations for masculinity or femininity from others in our worlds pale in comparison to a God-rooted self-confidence in our identities in Christ.

Embracing my identity in Christ and consequently my masculinity, however it manifests itself in my world, liberates me from trying to box what manhood means according to other people, in their worlds.

Embracing The Spectrum:

The healing process is radical. It not only frees you of your chains, but opens your eyes to your fellow man’s needs so that you are moved to minister to those you once deemed unworthy.

I spent my adolescent years wrongfully believing that the boys who had made me feel isolated growing up, were unworthy; of my friendship, my time, or even my concern. “They had had it easy”. They fit “the norm”, so any struggle they encountered I deemed insignificant compared to mine.

Once healing began, The Holy Spirit gave me a crash course on statistics to open my eyes as to how the Body of Christ functions. If you’re not familiar with the term ‘normal distribution’, it is a function that represents the distribution of many random variables. It’s normally represented in a ‘bell curve’, as shown in the diagram below;

I won’t bore you with the stats talk, trust me – I hated maths at school, but this perfectly illustrates the point that I want to make. (If you’re a maths genius, please bare with me as I butcher this concept). In this diagram, you can see that most variables fall in the centre at 34.1%, and as you move to either sides of the curve, the percentage decreases. The data is representing the distribution of the same variables; the majority is at the centre, but there are still plenty that don’t fall in the dark blue region.

Once I realised that though I may not fall in the “34.1%”, with the majority of men, in Christ I am still represented in the bell curve of masculinity, such a heavy weight was lifted. I belonged. I’m here. I’m here. I remember that season of discovery vividly – how the Holy Spirit used it to re-instill so much lost confidence in my soul,  even convicting and burdening me for my fellow brothers, whether in the 34.1% or in the 0.1% bracket, now that I had realised that we are one Body. “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts…” Romans 12:4-6(a).We the Church, embrace the undeniable spectrum of personalities existing within humanity as it is created in God’s image and likeness, for “Christ is all, and is in all.” Colossians 3:11(b). In the Lord, the gentle man and the resilient woman, the expressive male and the reserved female, the stay-at-home father and the working mother alike, hold a significant role in the Body of Christ. A role that only the 0.1% on the bell curve can fulfill; a calling though not understood by the world, is fully known and anointed by The Father.

Every member of the Body becomes a spirit reflecting a trait of his/ her Creator in your eyes, when you choose to embrace the normal distribution that exists within your own sex and the opposite sex. This liberating truth opened the door to the brotherhood I had longed for all along; pure, unfiltered, edifying, long-lasting friendships with other men. Brotherhood that challenges me when I am falling short, comforts me when I am miserable, corrects me when I am backsliding, and prays for me when I am broken. By the grace of God, I now have brothers whose souls are knit to mine, and though we may fall at different points on the spectrum, “a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity” Proverbs 17:17. 

“I want you to know that the love that is between me and you is no bodily love, but a spiritual love. For bodily friendship has no firmness or stability, being moved by strange winds.”

– St. Anthony

‘David & Jonathan’ by Joanne Rozeik

If you have walked a similar road to me, I pray for your healing. I pray that your rooted identity in the Lord would nourish your self-confidence; that the chains of self-doubt and low self esteem would break free today. I pray that you would accept the radical truth that you are called to serve and minister to those very same people that make you feel unqualified. “The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.” Luke 8:38-39.

If you fall in the 34.1%, I pray for your healing also. For we are one Body, and if one brother or sister is hurting, then you are hurting also. I pray that the Lord would use you to embrace His children at all ends of the beautiful spectrum that humanity has been created into. I pray that you are a voice for those that have yet to discover theirs.

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21

“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Genesis 2:20

Eve; Life-giver (Strong’s concordance)

I recently started my women’s health placement and I can’t quite articulate how amazing it is to see women becoming ‘Eves’, becoming life givers, but I am beginning to understand that it means so much more than just labour, blood and tears (mostly my own).

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18

I have heard so many women wince at this verse, in misunderstanding we have withered womanhood, we have forgotten our calling. The hebrew  ‘Ezer Kenegdo’ – bluntly translated ‘a suitable helper’…but more accurately, the Hebrew word Ezer is translated as a combination of two roots: `-z-r, meaning “to rescue, to save,” and g-z-r, meaning “to be strong.” Eve was not only called a life giver but a life saver.

I have not found this life saving strength in the secularism of ‘having it all’. Womanhood isn’t about walking the tight rope of contradictions; not too fat, but not too skinny, not too loud but not too quite, driven, but not too much. It’s easy to get confused when we are bombarded with messages telling us that we are too much and yet not enough. Above and beyond all this, I see strength when I think about the selfless pangs and pushing of labour. Strength, when I think about how perhaps womanhood is the bridge where pain and love meet.

One of my favorite Sunday’s of lent was just a few weeks ago – the Samaritan woman*, once a temptress of hearts but through the words of our Savior she became so much more. Jesus spoke to her and said; “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Through His water, we too can become a fountain to quench the thirst we see around us.

It is no coincidence that we were created from a rib, close to the heart, enclosing it with unbreakable strength. Holding together the lungs that give the breath of life.

Woman;

An encourager of the hearts of men who have had their dreams stifled by the laughs of other men

A gentle hand to hold the fragments of men shattered by the cruel words of women

A compassionate embrace to those who are wounded in heart and spirit

A breath of air into the lungs of those who been winded with discouragement and despair

That’s who women are called to be.

“We are women, and my plea is let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.”

– Elizabeth Elliot

“To me, a lady … is gentle, she is gracious, she is godly and she is giving. You and I have the gift of femininity… the more womanly we are, the more manly men will be and the more God is glorified. Be women, be only women, be real women in obedience to God.”

– Elizabeth Elliot

“Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit.”
Kahlil Gibran

*http://www.antiochian.org/st-photini-samaritan-woman

This was written by a dear friend.

Tell me your secret: Pornography, I’m still learning to love.

The lonesome curse of the introverted recluse, the unbearable shaming weight of the extroverted socialite: pornography, at its core, is our broken generation’s poor excuse for human love.

Everything around us is different. We weren’t supposed to look like this. In as much as technology has advanced mankind, it has also receded our humanity to an impersonal, self-loathing collective of isolated individualism. We weren’t supposed to look like this. Love wasn’t supposed to look like this. God’s eyes see an unfulfilled generation of victims. Yet, as these victims, we have more reason than ever to hope, to depend on a power far beyond our capacity to fight. As victims of our own circumstance, we have the greatest capacity of all – to make His power manifest through every fragile weakness that composes our form – a fragmented form of a most precious, most lovable and most loved humanity. Being independently broken down as isolated men through our own weaknesses, we are united together by our collective pain for each other, for God we rise and rise, and rise yet again. I have hope. I’m still learning to love.

At the start of it all

There are times when it becomes clear to me that a deeper secret and a darker need, deeper and darker than my shackling habits, is in fact the strongest link in the chains holding me down. It is at the start of it all. Shunning aside every burning pre-pubescent lust, every teenage egoistic urge for admiration, every narrow-minded adult’s desire to express masculinity, there he sits, the small lonely child in my heart, repeatedly demoralized by every manifestation of the pain of his rejection. At times I cannot look into the mirror. I see his green eyes, desperate and teary, insecurely staring into mine. Swiftly, I look away. It isn’t the shame of his glare that I hide from, it’s the fear. Fear that every repressed negative belief about myself is in fact true. Fear that the small, lonesome child inside of me is unloved and well and truly unlovable. Ultimately rejected even by the fantasies that barely uphold themselves, the fragments of lies amount to a firm belief. At times, I avoid even sitting in silence, in prayerful meditation, because all I can hear is the child’s desperate voice, begging to be loved.

He hasn’t met my expectations as the presentable young man he should have become by now, the one he dresses like and acts to be. He’s simple, a feeble soul, with a thorough and shaken vulnerability like no other; broken, seemingly like no other. Broken, so very, very broken. He was only a child when he first saw that one explicit image, yet before he could resolve the anxiety of the trauma, he began to crave it more. It became his most intimate, valued treasure. He owned it. It became my porn. Over the years, at times, through the confusion and the turmoil, a balanced vision seeps through, and the single prayer of the child that lies at the core of my struggles repeats itself – the prayer I subconsciously prayed before I even knew what sex was, before I was even conceived. “Dearest God, please give me a kind, gentle hand to hold, that is all I ever desire.” As a growing man, nothing changed much since the start of it all. Rummaging through the endless pictures and clips, the child within me fantasises about that pure loving hand that now looks so vulgar and warped, yet as a man starving for love, not knowing how to love, I both reluctantly and desperately cling to.

The despair that I often find myself in does not stem from a mere frustration at my repeated failures and my feeble incapacity for self-restraint, because I’m already mature enough to be cognizant of my own shortcomings, of the confines of my strengths. I already know that as a human I cannot be defined as just a creation, or even as an end-product of evolutionary chance, but that I am defined as a true understanding of my desires, emotions and ambitions, restricted equally by both reality and self-control. But that’s not it, though. There’s more and I know it. Deep down, I know that there’s a difference. This shakes me at the core of my existence. Not only do I find my deepest and strongest intrinsic drive for expressing human affection, passion and love unexpressed, I find it compulsively expressed towards a lie. I knowingly break off fragments of my valuable heart and hand it over to a phantom, only to see it fall through the formless illusion and hit the ground, dying and unfixable. I rock to and fro between the two extremes of conviction – passionately embracing the pseudo-love because it numbs the emptiness, then retracting back to the true emptiness, woefully regretting my indulgence that left me emptier than before. Past my bold masculinity and the insensitive jesting, past the hoarse-voiced laughter and the aggressive ambition, there’s a fragility that goes untouched for deathly fear of being destroyed. There’s an overprotected intimacy, spoilt rotten by the ever-fulfilled delusional need to be silent, to be cocooned in a mind that is far too afraid to be revealed.

And the cycles begin, the painful patterns that I draw in my mind. Like rivers flowing through the valleys collapsing into the ocean to their demise, the variety of reasons pave their way through the valleys of my thoughts eventually gravitating to the single pool of demise – a pornographic ocean. A vast, vast solution to every rejection, every worry, every anger, every hunger and every isolation of experience. Too thirsty to even believe in freshwater reserves – in a holy, fulfilling and fulfilled sexuality – I’m allured by the ocean that provides its illusive worth of an unquenching mass of water, it leaves me even drier and thirstier that before. And I hate it, I hate myself for allowing it to make me what it made me.

I hear the people sing, ‘no man is an island’, yet in maturing I became the dictator of the island of my mind, I drove out the interpersonal society that began to flourish inside of me and I pushed away the edifying exterior influences that should have thrived within. Soon, I became that very island that no man can survive as. I became a man on my own terms, I became a man on my own, nothing more than an aged, shielded iteration of that terrified child inside. The child that is far too terrified to risk the pain of rejection that comes in its infinite forms and retracted deep inside your heart since the start of it all. “The evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing” (Rom 7:19). If it doesn’t even make sense to myself, how can I expect it to make sense to anyone else if I was to ever tell them? So I hide it. What kind of a Christian, deacon, fiancé, husband, lover and father can look like I do? So I hide it from my family, from my friends, from my relationships, but I cannot hide it from God, so I hide myself from God entirely…

Recycling the cycles of guilt and pain

The first stage of dealing with my guilt, is embracing my problem for what it truly is. For that reason, I have referred to pornography as my porn. It is mine. As I child I owned it as my dark, vile treasure, now I own it as the very key to my liberation. My porn is both the chains holding me down, and the means through which my chains will be broken through the loving grace of God. He says that the truth will set me free. My ownership is that truth. His unfailing acceptance is that truth. My liberation from guilt is that truth. My honesty is that truth that will set me free. Henri Nouwen says,

“Self-realization…is the growing ability to allow the dark side of our personality to enter into our awareness and thus prevent a one sided life in which only that which is presentable to the outside world is considered as a real part of ourselves. To come to an inner unity, totality and wholeness, every part of our self should be accepted and integrated. Christ represents the light in us. But Christ was crucified between two murderers and we cannot deny them, and certainly not the murderers who live in us.”

As with most painful experiences in our lives, once we learn to look past the suffering, an opportunity for compassion arises. God leverages our suffering, even that which is self-inflicted, to open up our hearts to a greater absolute truth – that humanity shares an overpowering need to be loved. I have always wondered why we need to be loved, why we need to give love and to make it. God’s image, our very selves, reflect His same passion in giving and receiving back from us, that which is given to us of Himself. That is God within us. That is God in others, which is in so much need for expression. The hours of suffering that follow the hours spent with my porn are incredibly dark, but they are a dark window opening my heart to the sleepless night of pain of those around me. I hear the words of the Psalmist, “Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth…The ploughers ploughed on my back; they made their furrows long” (Ps 129:2-3). Oh, how they’ve made their furrows in me so very, very long.

In the same way that porn is the lustful sugar-coating to my deep need for love, those around me that seek to fulfil their own need for intimacy and love colour their own hunger in a rainbow of expression. As my brother who I love, I invite you to take that silent heaviness as a moment of heartfelt, powerful prayer lifted up out of your own pain for the widespread suffering of the world. Lift up a prayer. For the girl you once loved, who out of a desperate, frantic need for validation, preferred to be lusted over and fantasised about than to subdue to the terrifying risk of her commitment to you. For your friend who it pains you to see dressing and acting provocatively to entice men through her seemingly immoral desire for sex, who deep beneath her wanting, lustrous eyes, an aching sadness and a begging for acceptance is buried. For your closest friend, who amidst the heavy bitterness and the disheartening complications of his soul, couldn’t find it in himself to even smile at your success. For your aggressive friend, who rages and furiously seeks out his own, yet only rages for and furiously seeks out a deeper conviction that he is worth loving. For your father who couldn’t love you, who, because of his misunderstanding of your adolescent pseudo-resentment towards him, lost the capacity to love himself and lost faith in the very value of his own fatherhood. For your bitter and discontented grandfather, who through the years, lost little-by-little the very love he spent his life building his heart upon. Feel their pain and forgive, “for they do not know what they do” (‭Luke‬ ‭23‬:‭34‬). They do not know how much hurt their pain has caused. Feel their pain my brother, that is the same pain that you hide behind your smile. Only in our darkest hours, can we see that we’re so very broken too and our hearts become ever kinder by the searing pain. ‘When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become,’ Henri Nouwen.

Pray for the deceptively seductive rainbow of pain arching over the world, for you are no more than a fragment of the brokenness of this earth and our porn is the explicit visual realisation of that same reality.

This is the glorious blessing that your porn can bring once you embrace it as a warped definition of your humanity, as your deep and great capacity for love, as misdirected as it may be. It hurts only because you are so loving, so affectionate, and so caring – it hurts because it makes you see how truly isolated and closed off you are.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

It’s time to share. But first, learn to forgive yourself. It isn’t your fault that your heart became so enslaved in these sexual perversions. Your fluctuating cravings and indulgences don’t change the truth about yourself. You’re still that pure child your mother raised you to be, the one who she taught absolute and unconditional respect for women. You’re still the protective brother who loves and respects every inch of his sister’s femininity and virtue. You are not your struggle. You are loved by God so incredibly deeply, not on the condition of an unfaltering purity, but by nature of your existence and for your persistent desire to return to Him, your Father, clothed in rags, smelling of swine, yet still the most valued, most precious, most beloved little child. ‘God said “Love Your Enemy,” and I obeyed Him and loved myself’ (Khalil Gibran). He says, “Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion” (‭Ps‬ ‭2‬:‭6‬). On Christ you are established, “a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden” (‭Mat‬ ‭5‬:‭14). Your light cannot be hidden. Though the hilltop lamp may flicker and be put out by the wind, “a smoking flax He will not quench” (‭Mat‬ ‭12‬:‭20‬). There is still hope in you. There is always hope in you. Forgive yourself and learn to love yourself as deeply as you are loved. You deserve far more than the self-loathing that only you impose on yourself. Listen to his voice “for the Father Himself loves you” (‭John‬ ‭16‬:‭27)‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬.

“But if you are a poor creature…- straddled, by no choice of your own, by some loathsome sexual perversion – nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex…do not despair. He knows about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) He will fling it on the scrap heap and give you a new one.”
C. S. Lewis

Sharing is caring

“But You, O LORD, are a shield for me, My glory and the One who lifts up my head” (‭Psalms‬ ‭3‬:‭3‬). My glory is in God’s acceptance and protection, not in my own capacity to keep myself pure. There is no shame, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear” (‭I John‬ ‭4‬:‭18‬). On your journey learning to love a wholesome, perfect love, begin by letting go of your fears to let that love inside and to allow it to flourish through its ever-transparent and honest vulnerability. “It’s not easy. Fear will tell us all the many reasons not to share, all the reasons why we should hide. It is a scary thing to take your darkness and expose it, because what if no one accepts our dark? I’ve learned not to be afraid, not to be afraid firstly of my own dark, and not to be afraid of other people’s. Never forget the truth that you are more. You are more than your worst mistake. You are more than your shame. These words of your weakness don’t define you.” (Makrina)

By learning to be vulnerable, I’m learning to love. I’m learning to hand over to my fellow man, the depths of my fear and the dark reason for my inability to truly love.

Usually, it isn’t our own flaws that we present to others that repel them away, it’s the flaws that we desperately try to hide from them which creep out during our interactions with them that repulse them. It’s the masks we put on that we try to deceive them with that drive them further away from us. Unravelling the truth of our own weakness is never as abhorrent as unravelling the lie that hid it away.

Let him out

Once I came to the conclusion that my porn is my own, that it does not define me, that it’s a desperate expression to fill the love-less, isolated void in my heart and that sharing is the key to filling my void, and ultimately, my freedom, then came the time for inner resolution.

Call him out. Call out the terrified green-eyed child inside your heart and let him heal in Sun of Righteousness. Call him out and comfort him. With a gentle, newly-found understanding teach him little-by-little that love is not in the shadows, it is not his shameful, dirty secret, it is not a wasted fantasy, but a loud and sacrificial truth. Teach him to speak of his own pain and struggle, teach him that his vulnerability empowers his loved ones to feel liberated in their own struggles, to allow them to feel the pain that we all share as a broken humanity without fear of shame. When he’s hurting, teach him to hear His Father’s words,

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you” (Jer 31:3). Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool (Isa 1:18). I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance (Luke 5:32). I have come for you, my broken, hurting child. I have come so that you do not have to live as an island – isolated, ever-retracting and self-loathing.”

And the healing child inside you can reply,

“I am dark, but lovely (Songs 1:5). Why should I be as one who veils herself? (Songs 1:7) The king has brought me into his chambers (Songs 1:4). I’m healing by my shedding. I’m becoming vulnerable to become intimate. For God, I will rise, and rise, and rise yet again. Pornography, my chains and the key to unleashing my chains, I’m still learning to love.”

As for me, you may ask who I am. I am your dark past and your hopeful future. I am your father and you mother, who did not know how to teach you to love when you recoiled to the safety of your porn. I am your friend who you waited long for to hear my secret so that you can tell me yours, and that we can both grow in love and be free from our pain. I am your brother who was too anxious to give to you the gift of your own liberation. I am your future self – the loving husband who can be as honest about his weakness as he is about his strengths. I am your future self – the vulnerable and caring father telling his children about his struggles with porn, helping them learn themselves to love, to open up and to share their pain. In our shared pain, I am an embodiment of your hope.

I am a fragmented form of a most precious, most lovable and most loved humanity.

Pornography, I’m still learning to love.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me..
Philippians 4:13

For the majority of my life I have done whatever I wanted to do. I was always the one in charge, doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I would block out that voice in my mind telling me ‘no’ and amplify my behaviour until that voice diminished to an eventual silence. I was comfortable with this lifestyle. I was happy doing what I felt brought me happiness. I didn’t want to change anything about this lifestyle as I thought it was perfect for me. I was ‘happy’ in my daily routine knowing what I’d be doing that day and who I would be seeing.

This comfortable life soon turned into an unfulfilled and unsatisfactory routine. I was living the same way but it felt different. I was no longer satisfied and content with anything. That voice that I had always shunned into a silence was louder than ever and I couldn’t escape it. I was scared. I didn’t want to leave the life I had always known and was so comfortable with, but I knew it was now or never.

My comfort zone break-out had begun. One thing God blessed me with that helped me on this journey was surrounding me with (truly great) people that were an amazing support and encouragement for me. I had seen my brother completely change his life for the better and he badly wanted the same for me. He was the first hand guiding me in this new journey and always pushing me get out of my old, comfortable routine. Before I knew it my daily routine was changing and I was starting to notice how much my life was changing too. I was being introduced to new people and became part of a new community that were bringing me closer to God. This was really helping me let go of old habits.

Admittedly, part of me wasn’t ready to take the huge leap back into my own Coptic church community. I was anxious and nervous of going back to the church I had tried escaping for so long. I didn’t want to face people that I had tried to avoid for so many years of my life and I was scared of rejection and disappointment. God, however, had a different plan for me. He continually sent me people that I could rely on and feel comfort around. These people encouraged me to take that dreaded leap and go on my first ever church conference, which was exactly a year ago now. He taught me to rely on Him and to trust His plan more than my own. I learnt how to really communicate with Him and more importantly how to listen to Him. He started to change my life in so many ways that I couldn’t have done on my own.

The main piece of advice I would give anyone wanting to take that step further in his or her spiritual journey, but is held back by fear of stepping out of what they feel is their comfort zone, is to remember you’re never on this journey alone. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9.

Here are some steps that will help;

Step 1:

Talk to God, He knows all that your heart desires and will give you the strength and courage to fulfill all the things you couldn’t do alone.

Step 2:

Remind yourself that there will never be the ‘perfect’ time to take this brave leap and push yourself out of your comfort zone. God’s planning and timing is so perfect that we could never remotely match his plans for us. In 2 Peter 3:8 we read that “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day”. He is a patient and loving God and will wait for us until we allow Him to make us ready to find his promise.

Step 3:

Accept his eternal love for you. He watches over you through your most sinful and corrupt days, not with anger and disgrace, but with compassion and love and will provide you with his free gift of grace.

Step 4:

Obey his word. We are rewarded with salvation when we truly turn to Christ and fulfill His Word. Give Him an inch and He will give you a mile.

Step 5:

Trust Him with the things that scare you the most and He will provide you with bravery and strength you never thought you had.

By turning to God and surrendering my life to Him, he has given me endless rewards and blessings that I thank Him for everyday. He has provided with an amazing group of friends that encourage me on this new journey and fill my life with so much joy. The life I was once so comfortable in is now a faded memory, and all the past fear and anxiety God has now turned into excitement to see when He is going to take me next.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight”
2 Corinthians 5:7

I liked it so much, I kissed many. I never believed in considering future consequences, only the here and now, only in the moment where my body lusted and craved another.

I believed in hedonism.

I was a lover of a sugar-coated world, biting deep enough to reach the salt beneath; left parched and bereft. But when invited to dine with the Divine, I counted up the cost and I conceded that He was worth it all. Because when you see the light, darkness doesn’t stand a chance. When you see the light, you cannot deny its existence.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.”
Isaiah 9:2

We tend towards hiding our not-so-pure stories, locking them deep into caskets that no one may see or hear. We profess forgiveness like we do breathing, yet shame whispers “tell no one” and we trust its every word. In a community amongst those who testify to the living Word, Who is pure and holy, Who calls us to be as He is, we feel there is no room for our stories of grace. We see the awe in people’s eyes as they intently listen to testimony after testimony, whilst observing how the same story-tellers are not trusted, always on trial. So we sit in silence, hear stories like ours being called a disgrace, bite our tongues as people express the need to marry only a “pure” spouse.

Yet, forgiveness does not beckon silence. And grace does not hide away our past sins. Rather it holds each thorn up to the light and transforms them into pure white lilies, with each petal holding a unique story, not to be forgotten, lest the power of grace be forgotten.

There’s a woman whose story I know well. Or perhaps, it is she that knows mine. A nameless woman, yet not a faceless one, for I have seen her face countless times when I’ve looked in the mirror. The courageous woman on the sixth hour of Wednesday eve.

She can see the Man she came for. She had heard that Christ had come to the house of the Pharisee. It was not too late to turn around, forget it all, save looking foolish, call it a moment of insanity. Yet, despite any doubt, she feels her feet carry her forward. Ardent, panting and perspiring, she makes her way to the large inner chamber of the banquet weaving through all the people. She does not dare look up. She can feel the heat of their burning disproval on the back of her neck. She hears the steady hum of conversation dwindle to hushed tones of disgust and scandal as they recognise her. People are moving a safe distance away from her. She pays them no mind, her eyes locked on this one Man. She had boldly chased after many men, but none like this. The room is silent now as they realise Who she came for. Does she really have the audacity to come before this righteous Man who claims to be God?

She walks forward, with one thing in mind. Sharp inhale. She stops right in front of him. Without lifting her eyes from the ground, she quietly and slowly kneels and lets down her hair. Memories flash before her of all those nights she used her hair as a snare to seduce, remembering all those fingers that ran wild and passionately through them. Her vision blurs as her eyes pour. Thick, heavy droplets of regret fall to His feet. She remembers the words spoken to her, how it was always her eyes that drew them in and held them captive, possessing their own alluring power. The eyes that stained her life with sin, now moistened His feet.

She stammers. With no words to say she does the only thing she could; she washes His feet. She takes her trembling hands, the same vessels that fed the pleasures of men, cups His feet and holds the thick strands of her locks to wipe them. She wonders if she has crossed a line, but He does not stop her or move away. She was accustomed to desiring men, but never desiring their forgiveness.

She takes her lips, lips that eagerly sought and caressed bare flesh, and kisses His feet. The room breaks out in shock; horror and objections ring loud in the room. An exchange of mutterings, naming her immoral, worthless and irreverent. She feels Him staring at her but she feels no fear and no shame. The others see Him staring at her, in a way they haven’t seen Him stare before. His eyes glisten, there is warmth. She knows how it feels to be stared at by a man, a ravaging stare full of fervent desire, but this was not the same. She feels Him look right through her. She is known, for the first time.

She pulls out her alabaster flask, her costly jar of sensual pleasure used to arose her lovers. The memories race, the images flash. She forcefully pushes them away as she breaks the alabaster flask. Her tears mingle with perfume and she continues to wipe with her hair. She kisses and pours; impure lips become holy. The beautiful fragrance rises. He does not speak but she feels His radiating, pure love. She feels something unexplainable she has never known before. Is this acceptance? Is this what it means to belong? She lifts up her head, looks Him in the eye, and she knows; nothing will ever be the same.

Luke 7 has its ending, but I’ve always wondered what happens next. I think of her departure to her normal life after being told that she was forgiven and loved. I think of how she must have replayed that moment over and over again in her head, how she must have wanted to tell everyone, scream and dance because of how light she felt and how her heart must have burst with joy. That cherished moment she shared with Her Saviour will forever be theirs. I also think of the men who must have knocked on her door that night. All those men that kept knocking because they never believed that she could change. I think of years of learnt behaviour that was like second nature and all she saw from her former life when she closed her eyes to pray. I think of her walking back into her bedroom, those four walls that contained all her unchaste amorous nights, and trying to pray. To rise in the place that she fell.

For, redemption is no passive, tidy ideology. Redemption is real and redemption is messy, it is as messy as sweat and a bloody cross. And it is on that same cross that the proclamation was made, “Tetelestai,” confirming the end, it is finished, it is done. No need to walk with head hanging low, shame raised high, but walk joyously in the light. The light that beckons every soul; those who have given in to every single fleshly desire and all those who haven’t. Because the Light does not differentiate, it infiltrates every darkness; and darkness has no measure. It is that same Light that looks upon us with the eyes of compassion and gives us the assurance that,

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 8:1

Our belief in this truth is dependent solely on ourselves and not in other peoples responses to our former life, our own thoughts or the enemies lies. Our remembrance of our sexual sin can be crippling. We may be crippled by the way we once behaved; disregarding the holy in ourselves and in others. We may be crippled by the fear of falling back into old ways, and the fear of being too marred in the eyes of another. The taste of sexual pleasure is not an easy one to forget, and we may fear our longing for that same gratification. We may be haunted by the words spoken once on dark nights, or the daily glances that remind us of the power we possess. It is a life-long battle to fight, whilst holding tight to the truth that there is now no condemnation, and expectantly praying, “According to your good will, O God fill our hearts with your peace. Cleanse us from all blemish, all guile, all hypocrisy, all malice and the remembrance of evil entailing death” (The Liturgy According to St Basil the Great).

And as we pray this, may we approach the Eucharist, His own flesh and blood, just as the woman approached Him, offering every piece of herself at His feet, broken like the alabaster jar. She recognised Him not as an ordinary man but as her Saviour, yet we often approach Him as mere bread and wine, blind to the Majesty that pours Himself out before us. Let us walk repentantly, with fear and trembling, towards the Holy One and partake of the exchange of life that He offers, no matter what sin we laid with the night before, knowing that His love grants us the audacity to approach Him with confidence and being rooted in His Life, the mystical power to flee all other lovers.

So I will not be afraid to speak of my past sin, the desire of sin on skin, the Edenic memory of Adam and Eve’s freedom in expression and pleasure corrupted and abused. Because, this I know, forgiveness and freedom is mine, and though I am a woman of unclean lips, as my lips touch His feet, there is redemption’s tale to tell.

Let the fragrance rise.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”
Isaiah 6:6-7

This body
My body
A swift sword
A time bomb
Ticking
Cutting

This soft skin that curves around me
That frames and encompasses me
I have seen its unsurpassed powers
I have tasted its intoxication
Eyes wide open
To its irresistible magic

Hard to forget
Its delicious sweet nectar
Dripping subtle, potent poison
This body
Is not a body
But a weapon

Of charm and deceit
Of self seeking ambition
I waste in admiration and affirmation
I glory in attention and adoration
I am a queen
Fluent in Sensuality’s language

The power euphoric
The formula, tried and tested
A gaze and a flutter of the eyes
The control to summon and cast away
The siren song that calls your name
To shipwreck on the stones

And I howl
“Come, I will take away your pain”
To those that pant for it gladly
Like a dark mist
Leaving corpses rotten and defiled
Asphyxiating all breath, all life

So I numbed all feeling
Revelled in my conquer and rule
Sank my feet in my reckless storm
This body
Is just a body
Empty, hollow and cold

The more it consumes
The more it seeks to devour
This body is flames
A trail of dust in its wake
Nothing it touches will escape
Nothing is left standing

Least of all myself
This body is foreign
I do not want it
So I hide and cover it
Who can free me
From this body of death?

A stranger in this body of death
Dismembered from my lifeless soul
I feel my body’s betrayal
Under a man’s unrelenting gaze
I feel the poison flood my veins again
When their heads turn

I am reminded of the queen I could be
The thrill of control
I feel the rumbling and the stirring
Threatening to take over
Seduction is awakening
She is hungry from her slumber

But I will deprive her
Lay her down in silent, painful death
Bind her in burial cloths and dig a grave
Roll a boulder in front of the entrance
Scream TETELESTAI
For indeed, it is finished

Because I am not poison, I am not sword
And I wait on a promise like a thread
Keeping me from fraying at the edges
Of the God who calls out to dry bones
Giving life to sinew after sinew
The God who never fails those who wait

The God who wore humanity’s chains
To shatter our every chain
The God who rolls heavy stones away from tombs
And raises from the dead
The God who puts heavy stones down out of your hand
And says, “Live loved”

In truth, I believe that in Him
All the old has passed away
In the Spirt
I am finally liberated
The Veil torn
My face unveiled

He steps into my tomb
And when I look Him in the eyes
I see myself
He tells me who I am
Not thorn but Lily
He tells me Rise and live

I believe, help my unbelief.

Co-written with Sandra.

“you carry your snare everywhere and spread your nets in all places. You allege that you never invite others to sin. You did not indeed by your words, but you have done so by our dress and your department… When you have made another sin in his heart how can you be innocent? Tell me, whom does the world condemn? Whom do judges punish? Those who drink the poison or those who administer the fatal portion? You have prepared the abominable cup, you have given the death dealing drink, and you are more criminal than those who poison the body; you murder not the body but the soul. And it is not to enemies you do this nor are you urged on by any imaginary necessity, nor provoked by injury, but of foolish vanity and pride.”
St John Chrysostom

Distressed by this perilous power, possessed by us, the carriers of the XX chromosome. A strategic power we oft deny, secretly delighting in its effects.

Because the truth is, we notice a man’s affection, we notice when we are the object of any mans attention. We are not blind, hard-hearted machines that are immune to any form of charm or attraction. A sweet-talking man is a sweet-talking man, as Antarctica summer’s are cold.

And this power I observe upon the consumption of attention and words of affirmation. This power that devours the lustful thoughts of man, intertwined with my deep longing to be the object of man’s affection. This power, a sexual upper hand, knowing that a move in this direction, or a certain look, will hold him captive; reeling the subject around my finger. A power all too often used to seduce and manipulate.

Because no matter where you look, there it is, leaving an undeniable impression; the sultry expression on youthful faces, the come-get-me eyes, the flirtatious words and the promiscuous dress code.

And don’t we all desire to be found appealing? At the surface it is the perfect “subtle” manner to receive that mans’ attention, but at its core, it is the thirst for the alluring power of control.

Though this power be strong, it is hollow, obliterating Truth, and holds the captivators captive.

We only ever hear of men, how supposedly, men hurt, cheat and lie. How men are lustful beings, unable to control their desires. But oft I find that it is we, we who possess this XX chromosome, who are unable to control; we are the merciless perpetrators, with men as our prey.

Because with this power comes control, the control of having him at my feet.

So I take mine to Him. I open His word and as a mirror I see a portrait of my flaunting and enticing behaviour.

She “captures him with her eyelashes, luring him with just a look”

Proverbs 6:25

The words tug and snag and I pull. She is I. I read on and the picture comes into focus and sharpens.

“And behold, a woman comes to meet him, dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart. She is boisterous and rebellious, her feet do not remain at home; She is now in the streets, now in the squares, and lurks by every corner. So she seizes him and kisses him and with a brazen face she (speaks) to him . . .”

Proverbs 7:10-13.

What will be the grand result of my actions? Will I take the world by storm or will I be dashed to pieces on the rocks of deception?

“Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, do not stray into her paths; For she has cast down many wounded, And all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, Descending to the chambers of death.”
Proverbs 7:25-27

With power comes a choice. Under the influence of a woman, cities have crumbled (Joshua 2-6), and kings have caved (Mark 6).

When we travel to the start the truth is laid bare.

“The man called his wife’s name Eve [life giver], because she would be the mother of all the living.”

Genesis 3:20

A woman was created not by accident or chance but with purpose: born to be a helper. A name, an identity, a declaration is given. To be an echo of Christ instead of echoing the world. To encourage and uplift men like many women have done before us.

Feminine beauty was never about radiating sensuality but radiating an aroma of the stunning beauty of Christ, a breath of fresh air…of life.

“So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.”

Romans 14:19.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss says, “If our hearts are right with God—if we’re walking in purity and humility before Him—the fruit will be a modest external appearance.”

With great power, comes great responsibility. We can reach out to others, spread truth, and encourage the lives around us. This means we have great power. And along with that great power, we are also given the great responsibility to use it wisely.

May we never allow our outward beauty to diminish the beauty He is weaving within our soul.

May we run with hoarse throats, exhausted lungs, and full hearts proclaiming the glorious loveliness of Jesus Christ and not with banners of our own loveliness.

So draw if we must, but let us draw others shamelessly to Beauty Himself.

“How beautiful are the arms, which have embraced Christ-the eyes which have gazed upon Christ, the lips which have spoken with Christ, the feet which have followed Christ. How beautiful are the hands which have worked the works of Christ, the feet which are treading in His footsteps have gone about doing good, the lips which have spread abroad His Name, the lives which have been counted for Him.”
Christina Rosetti

Co-written with Sandra.

“Never alter yourself to satisfy others” I hear you say to all your friends; “be yourself!” you preach. Really? You really want to go there Michael? The intention of this letter isn’t to break you, but build you. Wake up! I want to see you grow into the man you know that you’re called to be.

There is only One who knows you even better than I do – but I know you pretty darn well. You’re so bruised, so broken and insecure, so empty and fragile. The bullying of your past and the disgusting sins you’ve allowed to consume your life have poisoned your life. You’re so fake, so so fake my friend. If only you could see it… if only you’d allow yourself to look to the One who can show you a true reflection of who you currently are and who you were created to be.

Day and night you remember the bullying and nasty remarks said to you all through primary and secondary school. Yes, you had every right to be hurt but how foolish were your follow-up actions Michael? You’ve built walls after walls around yourself, attempting every possible way to mask the hurt you feel. You keep running from your list of insecurities that’s getting larger and larger. You’re so afraid of rejection that you’ve built multiple personas that perfectly fit all the boxed categories of your life; the funny-never-serious Michael vs the ‘deep’-serious-advice-giver Michael. The loud Michael overcompensating for the humour that you feel you lack vs the quiet and contemplative Michael that’s so foreign to people because they only get to see him when you’re seriously hurt. Every time you see an attribute you admire in someone, you copy and paste. A new identity. A new Michael added to the list. Another way to gain popularity and approval. You’ve completely convinced yourself that your worth comes only through the way you dress and your hairstyles – after all, that’s what you’re always getting complimented on right?

But thank God you’re not like these ‘terrible sinners’ around you at church that club and drink; you’re a passionate servant of the Lord – holy and righteous…and you make sure everyone sees it. You live for the moment when your deacon voice will be noticed, ask the most intellectual questions at youth meeting because that’s how you view spirituality and have an opinion about every political aspect in the church. At school it’s even harder – you have to work extra hard for that attention! You’re speaking vulgar words that you’d never imagined yourself to say. You publically proclaim yourself as ‘Coptic Orthodox Christian’ when you have no idea what Orthodoxy’s about. You run after gossip; you crave it – what else can you possibly talk about? Any other topic will show how boring you believe you really are.

You feed off people’s attention and compliments; everyday you run after your own glory and thirst for people’s approval. Stop, please stop! Don’t you see this life of absolute hypocrisy that you’re living? Can’t you feel the void in your heart?! Michael, all you’re running after, all you desire, everything you’ve ever wanted to be, every insecurity you’ve wanted to eradicate is found in JESUS. It’s Jesus that gives freedom. In His freedom you’ll find your identity – who you’re called to be! And oh Michael, if only you’d allow Him to share with you some of His plans for you…. if only you’d allow Him to start healing you…. if only you’d look to His everything instead of your nothing. Michael there’s something that I’m about to share with you that will change your life forever, one word that will literally turn your world upside down: GRACE. Yes, grace! God loves you forever Michael, He loves you as much as He loves St. Mary, St. Abanoub and the Pope – NO LESS, He’s madly in love with you while you’re committing your ugliest filthiest sin! You. Are. Loved. Unconditionally.

I want to let you know that one day you’ll look up to Heaven and for the first time you’ll be honest before God, openly telling Him your fear of people, of the future, of Him.. and oh Michael I can’t begin to explain to you how you’ll be transformed right there and then in that moment with your Saviour. Healing will finally begin! The Holy Spirit will flood your heart; a consuming fire will literally burn within you. He WILL give you peace. He WILL give you confidence. He WILL give you the identity you’ve been running after your entire life. At last you will begin to live.

Now blameless, He calls you holy; you’ve been forgiven,
He calls you righteous and free.

Now spotless, He calls you worthy; you are His child,
He calls you chosen, you are His.

Dear younger me, you were never meant to carry this beyond the cross.

Every mountain, every valley, through each heartache you will see,
that in every moment Jesus brings you closer to who you were meant to be.

Love,
Michael

“She said to her mistress, “if only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria!
He would cure him of his leprosy.”
2 Kings 5:3

I know you hate what you see in the mirror. I know how you avoid having your photo taken. On the outside you appear so confident and so strong but when you’re alone in your bedroom, you avoid looking in the mirror because you never feel good enough. I know the harder you try, the more insecure you feel because there is just always someone who is more beautiful. (How can you compete with that?) I know that when people compliment you, you think: they were just being nice. They didn’t really mean it. I know there are days defined by thoughts of anxiety about your weight and appearance. I know how you don’t think you’re worthy enough to enter certain stores, the stores who’s adverts you look at in awe in the magazines and believe, if you could just look like them, you would be complete – that’s when you’d finally be happy, that’s when you’ll finally have it all together. I know how you don’t feel worthy enough to wear trousers because your thighs are just too fat, so you stick to skirts and tell yourself you don’t like trousers anyway. I know how you watch all your friends get compliments and texts by boy after boy while in your whole 16 years you can’t seem to get one to look at you twice. Maybe because your hair just isn’t straight enough or you’re thighs just don’t have that gap in the middle.

There was a night when you went out for dinner with your friends to Frankie and Benny’s and your blonde, blue-eyed best friend had the waiter hand her his number on a napkin as you left and you went home and cried because you knew it wasn’t you because you just weren’t beautiful like her and you never would be. And there will be this time a few years after where you’ll actually go to your GP because you wanted to ask about nose surgery (there was a girl in dance class when you were in year 6 that said you had a big nose and you’d noticed it ever since).

I know and these things I know break my heart. You sweet, little girl have been lied to. You’ve been told that a specific look equals beautiful and that beautiful equals perfect and that perfect equals happy. You’ve been told that the admiration that comes with being considered beautiful is worth it no matter what the cost. You are ready to starve, throw up even.

You’ve been told that if you want to be successful in life you have to be beautiful. You have been told that if you want to be loved you have to beautiful. It seems absolutely crazy. And it is.

I want to tell you something but I need you to hear me out.

I want to tell you that what you believe about beauty will be determined by where you look, like TV shows, movies, music videos and the Internet. I know you’ve heard all about how Barbie does not reflect the appearance of the average woman and airbrushing has led to unrealistic beauty standards. It’s not about Barbie, airbrushing or Photoshop. You know the facts. What will actually save you from being self-conscious and self obsessed with your appearance is understanding what it stems from.

And it’s your pride.

Did you notice in your list of complaints about yourself, the predominant occurrence of the words “I’m” and “my”? True humility does precisely the opposite—it forgets itself. Your Maker formed you, lovingly and tenderly, so that He might be admired. When you worry about your appearance its because YOU crave admiration when you were actually created to reflect the glory and beauty of Christ to those around you, not the glory and beauty of yourself. Be wholly absorbed by Him.

I want to tell you today how those girls on the runway and in the magazines, that seem to have genes from another planet and are everything you’ll never be, are just one perception of beauty and perception of beauty fluctuates.

I want to tell you that your view of body-image cannot merely be given a makeover. It must be revolutionized. Your body is the temple of the holy spirit and Psalm 84:1 says, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!” You are God’s dwelling place. His lovely dwelling place.

But this is the part I really need you to trust me on. I want to tell you about a God who with just one word from His mouth made the heavens, with just one breath from His lips made the foundations. This God dreamed you up. He dreamed up every innermost detail of you with fear and wonder (Psalm 139:14). And the same God who holds the stars in His hand and placed them in the sky one by one, looks at your eyes and asks you to turn them away from Him for they overwhelm Him so (Song of Songs 6:5). This God thinks you’re beautiful enough to win your heart by dying for you. This God calls you flawless (Song of Songs 4:7). And here’s what really gets me every time. God does not exaggerate. When he says you make His heart beat faster (Song of Songs 4:9), He means it. What He says, you are. Doesn’t that beat any attention a guy could give you? Will you let that be enough? From your eye color to your hair color to your personality to your genes, God purposely created you this way, and you know what? He is enthralled by your beauty (Psalm 45:11). You are already beautiful enough to hold the King of Kings spellbound. Whatever you think beauty will give you, can you trust God to meet that need? Will you let that be where you find your worth and appreciation?

Oh and about the guy thing, the guy who loves Christ is the one who will love a girl looking to be adorned in Christ each day, containing the most valuable fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). There is a beauty that is much more precious than the number on a scale and that isn’t here today and gone tomorrow but rather gets better by time (Proverbs31:30).

Finally, I want to tell you; we were made for beauty and beauty is so incredibly important. But please understand; we weren’t made to be beauty graspers. We were made to be beauty gazers because, Victoria Secret models and Beyoncé aside, there is someone who is so much more infinite in beauty than all of them put together. Just spend time with Your Lord and Maker alone and I promise you’ll see. Isolation won’t help you heal. This is an idol so you need to read the truth in His word when it’s too dark to see beyond the lies you’ve come to believe; you don’t need more self esteem and you don’t need more beauty. You need to esteem Him first. Some days are still harder than others; run. Run to Him with hope and faith even if that faith seems too small to be enough. I’ve been where you are and He has boundless grace enough for you.

“One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.”
Psalm 27:4

Joyfully,
Sandra

Now, I dont know about you, but something about that tugged a little at my heart. It sounds exciting. I want that. Its the kind of love we ‘oooh’ and ‘awww’ at when we hear about from our friends in relationships, the kind of love we dream about finding when ‘that’ song is played on the radio and the kind of love we watch in movies like ‘A Walk To Remember’ and let it touch us to the point of tears and that we can shout most of the lines with the actors at the screen from the amount of times we have watched it. They are our favourite movies after all!

Something about reckless abandon and love just fits. It clicks. It seems right, and it seems like we deserve it. And we just cant wait for it to show up and knock us off our feet. But why is it we call over our girlfriends for late night sleepovers that revolve around gushing and swooning about the lucky day that happens but when we apply those exact same sentiments, that same reckless abandon to God we struggle with that idea?

God is Dad, I obey Him. God is my Best friend, I’ll talk to him. But God is my lover, I’ll fall crazily-madly in love with Him and let him sweep me so off my feet that I can’t help talking about how sweet He is to all my friends and I cant help but let my heart break for what breaks His and I can’t help but only go where I can take Him with me because I like to hold His hand everywhere I go? No thank you.

Why is it we would all jump with joy if that man who caught our eye at church asked us out on a date for Valentine’s, but the idea of going to church with a rose to spend time sitting with our Creator seems pathetic and something to mock someone about? Why is it when one of our friends’ relationship goes official, tons of people like the photos they put up of themselves and comment about how cute and lucky they are but the idea of us posting a status about how much God has won our heart would make people want to click off the page as quickly as possible? Why is it our hearts sprint at a million beats per minute when that attractive man looks our way but when we open our Bibles and read His eternal promises, dripping with the unconditional love of His sacrifice, we find it difficult to not fall asleep? Why do we spend energy and time trying to find out the things the men we are interested in like and dislike (and coincidentally they start becoming the things we like or dislike!) but we’re more than happy to know the bare minimum of what Christ likes from us?

Isn’t it funny that it was all His idea anyway – this big old fairytale where we get fought for and rescued from our lonely misery to get lost on this epic adventure with the One who would die for us – but we refuse spending those desires on the One who created them and would rather spend them on that which He created? Isn’t it funny because in fact He’s actually the only One whose genuinely worth it, who genuinely deserves it.

Christ alone died for our hearts, Christ alone deserves our hearts. All of our hearts.

Have you ever thought that maybe it’s not too much of a bad idea to love Jesus with that much zeal and fervour the way we’d love our boyfriends or husbands one day, not being able to make it through an hour without thinking of them, always finding little ways to sneak in a little for time with them during your day. You see that’s how love was meant to work. It shouldn’t be any different because we are talking about God. If anything it should be more! His love is the most extravagant love, we’ll taste. Just think of the day you’ll see him face to face and you take that first look into the One whose eyes blaze with a jealous fire over you! But dont think of how you’ll feel, instead think of the happiness when He sees you (it’s that way in weddings – if we want to see joy, we look in the grooms face). If for the joy set before Him he endured the cross, can you imagine what will happen when he finally gets hold of that joy? When he finally grabs us and never lets go of our hands?

You are His joy. You are the life Christ died to save.

One day Jesus will gaze at us with satisfaction, and every bit of struggle, every bit of fighting I did to make Him my everything, my one and only True Love, every idol I refuse to flirt with, every time I refuse to exchange His role as my number one Comforter and Provider and Lover in my life for a man, every time I love him like crazy-all those times will be worth it. They won’t only be worth it, I’ll probably wish I’d have been more crazy for Him!