I Am A Broken Tea Cup

((preface: this is a vision God gave to me of myself a long while back, but only today has it developed more into words.))

I'm a broken tea cup. I have red and yellow flowers on a white background. A red trimming along the handle and lip. I am pretty from afar, eye-catching. But hold me carefully because I'm chipped and cracked. No longer can I hold full a cup of tea. It dribbles down the sides in tear-shaped droplets, small and constant until I'm empty or hold the remnants of tea leaves. You try to drink from me, but my chips cut your lips and now your blood mixes with the tea. I hold that part of you in my center as it sinks to the bottom. You put me back into the lonely cupboard. The next person comes and picks me up unaware of the odd cracks camouflaged by my flowers. He holds me close, enjoying the warmth I carry from the tea, but as he holds me the warmth of the tea begins to slowly drip through his fingers now lined with nearly invisible, yet painful, cuts. He retreats to the handle to avoid my edges, holding me from afar still able to admire my beauty. His hand grows tired and he places me back in the cupboard. The next man comes by. He sees the beautiful tea cup in my imperfection. He holds me gently by the handle while he takes his time to examine me. He doesn't return me to the dusty cupboard. He sees my dangerous nicks that would dribble the tea onto his newly pressed shirt; he sees my chipped lip that could cause him to bleed; he sees my imperfect dangers and calls them "potential." He holds me from the bottom, supporting me firmly. He finds some filler to fill in the cracks. The filler is accented in gold. He fills the cracks, I can hold tea now. No more will the tea flow from me in tears. He prepares a gold molding to fit the chip in my lip. It fits perfectly as he attaches it. I am whole again. The tea will now pour only for those that choose to drink from me. All can appreciate my beauty from my new cupboard, but still can see the scars from the drops I've endured. Small pieces of me still float about in my old cupboard and kitchen. My new gold cracks and lip piece will be reminders I was once sharp, biting, unfulfilled. When they pick me up, they will pick me up from my new owners cupboard-- a clean and pristine cupboard, one filled with other mended china, but no dust or broken pieces. When people ask of me, he will hold me from the bottom, allowing my handle to be lifted by whomever and from whomever to drink from me, but yet only by his discretion, for he holds the key to the cupboard. He holds me firmly, having invested in my weakness. I will forever reflect his gold that now glimmers in my cracks. I no longer have to feel rejected by those that did not like my edges, for when they return me to the cupboard, they return me to the hand that filled me.

#jesus

You Need to Be Okay With Being Beautiful

This is a sad (personal) story, but one that has a happy ending coming.

I've always felt like a hideous brute. Yes. This is the truth and no, I am not fishing for compliments. I grew up a self-identified tomboy and this is how I have felt from middle school on, even a little before then, if I'm honest. I can remember being in 3rd grade and having some girls make fun of my hair because I had done it myself that day. Granted it was a frizzy mess, but that type of stuff stuck with me.

Men haven't generally flocked to me. I was second choice 9 times out of 10 in high school, and no matter how much that shouldn't mean anything, it meant a lot. My self-esteem plummeted so far into the recesses of my soul that only promiscuity made me feel pretty. I became one of those "give love to get love" girls. (Clarification: I did not sleep around, but flirting and teasing can be just as promiscuous.) 

Only recently have I begun to settle into my skin and feel like a beautiful person, inside and out. Whether from friends or attention from the opposite gender or just healing in my heart, I have begun to feel beautiful and truly believe that I am.

The first time I remember seeing myself as beautiful was about three years ago on my way to a bible study when I stopped to use the restroom. I had been feeling vulnerable because the bible study was a group of "pretty" girls I wasn't close friends with, and I thought I might be a little "too much" for them, but I was determined to be myself. When I looked in the mirror, I saw myself and I sucked in my breath. I was beautiful. It was so strange. I couldn't look away from the face in the mirror because she was so foreign to me. A lovely complexion on a round face with honest and vulnerable eyes...but it didn't last. The next day I looked in the mirror again and saw the same brute I had seen for years.

Another year went by and I still did not see myself as beautiful like I had that one day. Another year and I still felt unattractive. Then, this year something seems to have changed. 

God started this process forever ago, but my stubborn self only allowed my vulnerability to shine the beginning of last summer. See, when you're vulnerable, you have no walls up. You are you and that's it. My "new year's resolution" (made on my birthday) was that I would be myself, no matter how painfully hard. I would enjoy my quirks without fear of judgement. That's when I embraced vulnerability wholeheartedly...but ended up allowing myself to become too vulnerable. I didn't allow God to guard my heart. I got hurt, and thus my cycle began again.

This year, I've been working on vulnerability still, but this time, I'm in a better place with God and learning about being set free in Christ which incorporates learning how to let Him guard my heart so I can live in freedom as well. I'm learning from my past hurts in order to avoid the future ones that so inevitably will try to trick me into falling back into my old patterns.

So....

Last week I was in a vulnerable situation with a someone (not a sketchy type thing, just honesty and vulnerability surfaced...get your minds out the gutter). We sat and talked about feelings and past hurts and all that jazz. I told him I have always been "second pick" and he couldn't understand why people would pick me second, which baffled my mind because he thought that. He seemed to see me for me. I mean, I had just played an intense game of volleyball, I'm sure he could smell my sweaty grossness in the small space that is my car and he could obviously see my oh-so-attractive drenched-in-sweat t-shirt, and yet he still said I was beautiful. He said to me,

"You are beautiful, and you need to be okay with being beautiful."

That statement hit me like a ton of bricks. Not only because I have been told I was beautiful by a man I was interested in only a handful of times and not because he had an accent, but because I wasn't expecting it. My breathing caught and I couldn't look him in the eyes, something characteristic of myself when I'm feeling intensely vulnerable. Also, he said I needed to be okay with being beautiful. I had never thought of myself as not being okay with being beautiful, just never thought I would be considered beautiful.

((Tangent/Food for Thought: Can you really know if someone is beautiful after knowing them for such a short period of time? Does that kind of initial reaction only grow as you get to know the person? Is that what 60 year plus marriages are made out of? Can you really think someone is beautiful without knowing them deeply? Does vulnerability really expose that much of you to a person that they could see your true beauty?))

When he said this to me, it was like the LORD reached down and straight plucked my heart strings to play some soft melody that stirred the most intense emotions of confusion and excitement and joy. The confusion because I heard the honesty in his voice, excitement because someone found me beautiful, and joy because what else could I feel?!  God was revealing His truth to me through this guy. It turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to me.

He sat three feet away from me, yet it could have been 3,000 miles or 3 inches. The statement resounded in my heart like a sonic boom.

So if you are like me, and you have thought you are a hideous creature and that God somehow screwed up when He made you; that perhaps you are the "leftovers" from your older siblings and you just missed out on the looks portion of the gene pool; or you were always chosen second in high school and never asked to dances...let down your walls. Let God into your heart and into the places that are so dark that you don't even know they are there. Let God into those places. Ask Him to heal what you don't even realize is wounded because you've become numb to everything painful. Allow Him to use people in your life to show you that you ARE beautiful. Maybe you're not there yet, that's okay. Just believe that the people that tell you that you're beautiful are being honest with you, especially if they're close to you.

Ask Him to help you to be OKAY with being beautiful.

It's still a struggle for me. I'm constantly battling the thought that the guy just said that because he wanted "some." That he didn't care about me or how I felt or how I felt about myself. I didn't know him well, I still don't. Maybe a year from now if we remain friends and continue to get to know each other, I'll believe that he meant it. Maybe not. Maybe 15 more people will tell me the same thing, but I won't believe it until the 16th comes along.

Insecurity in a world of perfection is a rough thing. It's a real thing, but it can be overcome.

You and I are beautiful, and we need to be okay with it.

--Maggie Mae

((PS- When I say "beautiful" throughout this post, I mean the truest depth of attraction. What God has instilled within all of us because He makes beautiful things, and what are we other then things with skin?))

 ((also, if the a fore mentioned guy reads this, because you know who you are, yes this affected me that much, and no I'm no in love with you or anything because of it......just wanted to clarify))