You say tomato. I say tomato.

A brave friend of mine recently sent me a letter regarding her life-long struggles with beauty and body image.   Here's one of her questions...

"How do you defend the statement, 'It's not about physical beauty, it's about inner beauty'?"  Such a good question and worth a thoughtful answer.

The desire to be beautiful haunts all women, regardless of age or race. It is our curse, from the days of Eve, none of us exempt.   Part of Eve's punishment for her sin of wanting to be like God was that she would forever "crave her husband" (Genesis 3:16).  Enough from him would never be enough for her.  

Beauty is our power.  When we are deemed beautiful, our husbands, and others, give us what we crave, which is complete, undivided attention.  When we feel inadequate in our beauty, we feel powerless, invisible, and not worthy of anyones (even God's) undivided attention and love. Elective plastic surgery, exercise addictions, eating compulsions, materialism, depression, discord, discontent and envy all spring from our constancy of wanting this power to draw and hold attention.  It's a losing battle.  Beauty does not bring life, it is the result of true life.  

It seems that there are two routes women take to deal with our problem.

1.  I will do anything and everything to maintain and create my beauty because I realize it's my power

2.  I will pretend that beauty is not really that important to me anyway. 

So, while we don't struggle in equal measure with every branch of this issue, the ROOT of this cursed tree is the same.  Just like Eve, enough is not enough for any of us.

These days I am eating mid-summer-just-picked-from-the-farm tomatoes each night.  This is real beauty and a great joy.  The fruit looks like a tomato, smells like a tomato, not perfect in form (kind of squat and ugly, actually) but tastes joyously like how a tomato should taste.  It's wholeness and wholesomeness gives great pleasure.  Before I slice into one of these tomatoes, I know exactly what I'm going to get.   

Put a fake, genetically engineered and pretty-on-the-outside grocery store tomato on the same china dish and I am left sorely disappointed.  Expecting one thing, I get so much less.  Chalk in the mouth.  Blech.

This is what I mean by inner beauty.  It delivers more when it is devoured.  When you meet and know a "farm tomato" woman, it is a feast.  She is beautiful to all the intuitive senses, not just sight, and she does not leave you feeling disenchanted.  She delivers more than what the eye can take in.  She might not look perfect on the windowsill, but she satisfies your deeper yearnings of real beauty, and real life.  

Our culture consistently settles for perfect, fake, tasteless tomatoes.  We've lost the taste for the real thing.   It's not men or the media driving this train wreck...it's us, sisters!  Fight it.  See it.  Reckon with it as you examine your own heart and deliver it  in to the hands of your loving and ever-attentive Maker.