Strong Enough

Yesterday as I was getting ready for church, I turned on one of my Sunday playlists, with a mix of more spiritual music. The song, "Beautiful to Him" by Rachel Thibodeau came on. I hadn't heard it in awhile, but immediately my mind was drawn back about 7 years to when I was a junior and senior in high school. This song was my theme song. I listened to it nearly every day before I went to school. I loved my high school. I loved my friends, my activities, and most of my classes. But no matter where you live or who you're surrounded by, the world always has its way of sending messages to you. I don't know how someone could completely escape that. Media and the world's influence bombard us constantly with messages that we aren't good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, sexy enough, ...the list goes on and on. It tells us we absolutely must buy this, do that, look at this, click on that. And when we choose not to, we are immediately categorized as "old fashioned", "immature", "ignorant", "unpopular", "intolerant". THOSE ARE LIES!!

I love this song because it talks about these pressures. Some of the lyrics within the song read:

The world's little lies

destruction in disguise

opportunities to compromise

to make me beautiful in their eyes

but I'm not going to buy

the world's little lies.

'Cause I define myself and find my beauty in the light He gives

I'm refined by His divine intentions every day I live

It doesn't matter what the world believes

Or what they say that beauty means

It comes from within

I want to be beautiful to Him

That's what I want. Not that I'm perfect, and not that I never buy into the world's beliefs or lies. But, ultimately, I really do just want to be good. I want to be beautiful to Him: to God. At the end of the day, will it really matter what people around me thought, if I did what I felt was right? No. When we follow God and act in good conscience of what we believe to be right and true, we can remember that we are good enough, We are beautiful. We are strong. We can be strong enough to take a stand for ourselves, those around us, our families, and our God. Let's just all be a little nicer to each other, and dare to do what's right. As we do so, we can become beautiful to Him.