Called Beauty

I just would like to say before I actually start writing that the reason I'm writing is because this is on my heart. I'm writing it half to let you know what I think, but the other half is to explore further what I actually think. That is all. 

This is a picture of my brother and sisters and I on Easter Sunday this year. We're super cute, I know. I love those guys so so much. But the reason I'm including this picture in my blog is to show you how beautiful my baby sister is. She's the one with the brown hair and glasses and pink sweater.

You know the feeling of putting on Chacos after a long cold winter? It feels like your feet were made for your Chacos and they couldn't fit better. It's somewhat similar to when Prince Charming puts the glass slipper on Cinderella's foot, except for way better because you can actually walk in Chacos. And do a lot of other stuff and that's why I love them so much.

Well, I love my sister more than I love that feeling. And that's a lot, because that is my favorite feeling in the world. I'm serious. 

I'm writing about my sister today because she doesn't think she's pretty. Just look at her. Scroll back up and look at that cute little girl's face. How heartbreaking is it that someone so beautiful and so wonderful doesn't believe me when I tell her she's pretty? 

This is not okay with me. It hurts my heart very much. She is in fourth grade and she does not need to worry about what she looks like. No one should have to. 

The Bible says, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well." (Psalm 139:13-14). And I think that this can kind of be read two ways. It can be taken a more selfish way, or a more selfless way. 

The more selfish way would be reading this as promoting yourself and your own appearance. As in, "Hey, God did a good job with me. Thanks, God, for making me so beautiful and wonderful." But that totally disregards what the psalmist says right before that, when he says, "I praise you." I think that what the psalmist meant when he wrote this is that God doesn't mess up. He makes us how He makes us on purpose. He gave Sallie freckles on purpose (and I'm so glad he did because they are super cute). Also it doesn't matter so much what we look like, because we're here to glorify God, not ourselves. Not. Ourselves.

It's so so easy to say that and not believe it. 

What it seems to boil down to is security. Where are we finding our security? Where are you finding your security? If you're finding it in your appearance then prepare to be disappointed because it's physically impossible to look good all the time. For reals. If you're finding your security in the God who formed you in your mother's womb, you, specifically, and leaning and relying on Him for all of your everything, you're not going to be disappointed. 

It's definitely easier said than done, but that's why we have so many reminders. Like the catechism: "What is man's chief end?...Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." If we're focused on doing that and only that, we won't worry about our looks or the zits on our foreheads or the dents in our legs or developing backne or the fact that today we have frizzy hair, because we won't care! All we will care about is loving and praising and worshipping our God all the time.

It is such an honor to be made in the image of God. I'm serious. Think about it. Everybody loves music.  Everybody likes musicians who have new, cool, unique music and lyrics, who break barriers and come up with new sounds. Okay well God came up with music. The whole thing was entirely His idea and I just can't even comprehend that but I love it. Also He created everything else ever. That's a lot of stuff. And in the same way that He created the Grand Canyon and chocolate and the color blue, He created you. On purpose. What an honor, what a privilege! 

Okay now listen to this song and try not to explode with thankfulness and joy for our creative and patient (incredibly patient) God who loves us even when we, time and time again, turn our backs on Him (consciously, not even just because we're silly. We on purpose neglect Him because we're stubborn and dumb), and who continues to, time and time again, daily, love us. Just love us. Also die for all those things that we deliberately did that were against Him. He continues to keep us as treasures in His eyes! It's not even just that we're in time out, sitting in a corner and hoping He'll maybe one day forgive us but probably not. No, it's that He forgave us already, already paid for all the awful things we've done and are going to do that are the opposite of what He commands us to do and He still loves us even though He doesn't need us. And He still wants to save us and He still wants to keep us warm and He still wants to be our God. And He is.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?" Sometimes I like to add extra things into this passage, like calculus or money or sleep deprivation or annoying people. This time I'm adding appearances. Shall tribulation, or distress, or appearances, or persecution, or freckles, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35, 37-39). We are more than conquerors! There is nothing, in all creation, that can separate us from the love of our Savior. There ain't nothin. Even on our most rebellious, independent and spiteful days, nothing can separate us from His love. 

"You make me beautiful, You make me stand in awe, You step inside my heart, and I am amazed. I love to hear you say who I am is quite enough. You make me worthy of love and beautiful!" - Bethany Dillon

Love,
Lauralicious

God Made You Special and He Loves You Very Much

Do you ever get in one of those moods where you feel like no matter how many showers you take or how much deodorant you put on, you still smell like nasty armpits all the time? I've been in one of those recently. The kind where I feel like all I ever talk about is myself and I can't seem to stop. The kind of mood where I just know that if I was British I wouldn't have problems in my life. Like at all. The kind where I keep on acting stupid, and not in a cute way and not on purpose. Words just hop out of my big old mouth before I get a chance to give them permission to leave it and then my face feels really hot. The kind of mood where I'm annoyed with everybody all the time but also I love them. The kind of mood where I'm afraid that if I don't hang out with my friends, they're going to forget me and I won't have any friends at all in the world. The kind of mood where I get inexorably upset really late at night and instead of going to bed, I just listen to music that calmed me in my childhood and then am embarrassed by it in the morning. I feel clingy and emotional and I just can't stop. I'm in the kind of mood where I think people are joking when they compliment me.

I just feel like I'm nothing but a Laura in a sea of Laurens.

But actually...I am His cheeseburger!

If you didn't watch Veggietales as a child, I hate to be rude, but you had bad parents. It's vegetables (and some fruits) teaching little children Bible stories and singing silly songs that actually have meaning. Like this one. It's silly, but also so encouraging. I mean, I never really thought that being compared to fried food would make me feel better about my life, but here I am.

I know that when I'm in a bad mood, I want to stay in that bad mood. I enjoy being grumpy and I don't try to get happy when I'm snarky. I just stay snarky and then regret it later. So I hate to be that person who brings God into it, because that person always makes me feel bad for being so selfish in my crabbiness. But it's because I'm being selfish and it's time for me to stop.

And I know that it isn't always comforting or consoling when you're seriously upset about something of actual substance that "Jesus loves you." Because how is that going to help you decide whether you want to take a year off from college to work in a nursing home? How is that going to make your heart stop hurting when mean people deliberately hurt it? How does the fact that a big deity who cannot be seen or heard exists up there and loves you going to make you do better in your English class?

None of that stuff matters. The reason you're here on planet Earth in the City of Clemson on the campus of Clemson University as a student and also employee is so you can glorify God in everything you do. "Although you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy" (1 Peter 1:8). He plucked you up from the cold hard ground where you were whimpering and shivering and He kissed you on your cheek and held you in His hands until you weren't shaking anymore and He told you that you don't have to worry about a thing ever again. Every little thing is going to be alright.

So when you're stressing out about who's going to cover your shift at work this weekend when you're gone and what's going to happen if everything isn't perfect all the time and what if you're late to class, just chill out. The King of the world loves you. Max Lucado says, "On the eve of the cross, Jesus made His decision. He would rather go to Hell for you than to Heaven without you."

Doesn't that just make you want to cry happy tears?

It isn't that other things in the world don't matter at all, because they do. School matters, jobs matter, friends and relationships matter. But not nearly as much as the fact that you are loved by the Messiah and that He has called you by name. It is your job now, above everything else, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. In everything you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters (Colossians 3:23).

Because He loves you, Cheeseburger, with all His heart, and there ain't nothing gonna tear you two apart, and if the world suddenly ran out of cheese, then He would get down on His hands and knees to see if someone accidentally dropped some cheese in the dirt, then He would wipe it off for you, wipe it off for you, clean the dirty cheese off just for you!

You are His cheeseburger.

Love,
Lauralicious

The Cure for Pain

I have multiple favorite bands. Most of them are groups of men who sing to me about Jesus. Relient K, who has such a lovely way of combining hilariousness with stark truth and speaking really quickly and capturing my exact emotions, Needtobreathe, who I got to see last weekend and makes me want to go dancing and worship Jesus at the same time all the time, and Switchfoot, who sings about emotions and issues that I had only subconsciously recognized before. 

The lead singer of Switchfoot is also an incredible human. This might be weird, but I listen to him when I go to sleep at night sometimes. His solo albums, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Limbs and Branches, are very calming but also very thought-provoking. I love listening to him. Love it. I love his solo stuff, I love Switchfoot, and I love his other band, Fiction Family.

I was recently listening to Jon Foreman's solo music, and singing along with it, as I do, and I noticed something. There is a line in the song, "The Cure for Pain" where he says, "We're either riders or fools behind the reign." I had always just assumed that he was saying, "We're either writers or fools behind the rain," and that didn't make very much sense to me, but I'm going to be honest and say that there are a lot of things I don't understand, so I just went with it. 

But then I was just listening and I realized what he was actually saying. How profound is that? That right there is why I love Jon Foreman. What he's saying is that life is going to happen whether you like it or not. You're either a rider or a fool behind the reign. A rider is on top of the horse, holding reigns but cognizant of the fact that it's a horse he's riding, and the horse is the one controlling where he's going. But a fool behind the reigns is exactly that. He thinks he's got it all together, but he's going to have a rude awakening one day. That day may be soon, or it may be really far away, but that guy is a fool because he thinks he's in charge of his life, when actually, he isn't. It's God. God is the horse. 

Jon sings in his song, 
"So blood is fire pulsing through our veins
We're either riders or fools behind the reigns
I've spent ten years trying to sing it all away
But the water keeps on falling from my tries
And heaven knows, heaven knows
I've tried to find a cure for the pain
Oh my Lord, to suffer like You do
It would be a lie to run away."

I haven't seen Jon (or Switchfoot) live yet, but it's on my list of stuff to do. When I do, I want to thank Jon personally for just being who he is and making the music that he makes and allowing it to be recorded and put onto the interwebs so that I can listen to it and fall in love with it, because I have. 

I wish that I could talk about and analyze every one of Jon's songs on here so you could learn how wonderful he is and start listening to him and never stop. But he has a lot of songs and that would take a long time and you might have to go do your homework or eat dinner or pee and I wouldn't want to keep you from those things. 

So just trust me. He's pretty cool. 

"This world is where I breathe, but let it never be called home."

Love, 
Lauralicious

Legging Aren't Pants but I'm Kind of a Jerk

If you pay attention to your life at all, you will have noticed that there are a ton of girls who prance around our planet wearing leggings as pants, and, newsflash, leggings aren't pants. They're just not. It's not appropriate and it's not entirely that attractive other than the fact that you can just see everything and showing people everything is not a classy thing. These girls are wearing leggings as a go-to...for every outfit. I cannot walk across campus without seeing this abomination multiple times. I've even seen tights as pants, which is even worse and also really yucky. And all of this bothers me. 

Why does it bother me? 

It bothers me because I'm prideful. Because I run in Christian circles who preach at me and to me that leggings are not pants and that I shouldn't do that because I don't want to cause the men and boys in my life to stumble. And it's true. I don't. 

It's gotten to the point where I feel superior to girls who do this because obviously I'm better than them. I have dignity and pride and I know that this may cause males to stumble, so I won't do it, for the good of the earth. I'm making it about me. It's like I'm bitter about not wearing leggings as pants, so I hate everyone who does it. That's kind of an exaggeration, but that's the general feeling going on in my little brain. 

But...Jesus wants me to love my enemies, right? Not that these girls are quite my enemies...because they're not. They're just girls who make fashion choices that I don't agree with morally. But, enemies or not, should I not love them? They're not going to see Jesus through me very clearly if I'm judging them harshly through my anti-legginged soul.

I'm not saying that to love these girls means to embrace their culture of inappropriate bottom-coverage, because it doesn't. But I am saying that it means that I should LOVE them and be kind to them and not make stink-eye faces at them when I pass them or make assumptions about their lives because of what they chose to wear on their behinds today, incorrectly assuming that what they chose passes as pants, or refuse to be friends with them because it's entirely possible that they could be nice people! They're just misguided. 

And so, to un-misguide them and to prevent them from committing this apparent crime over and over again for the rest of their days, I could just show them what does count as pants. I mean, it's just a thought. 

I am aware that Jesus never directly addressed this issue during His time here on earth. But let me just say something. There are a lot of times in the Bible we women are told not to adorn ourselves with gold or braids, etc. Nowhere does anybody say that gold is evil, because it isn't. It can be used for evil (for example: golden calf in Exodus), but gold is not inherently evil. There are a lot of really cool gold things, and there is a passage in Luke where Jesus tells the parable of the gold coins (Luke 19:11-27. Read it.) and in this passage, the master gives his servants gold coins, which is a great honor and very generous of him. The gold is not the bad thing in this parable. It's the lazy servant. Gold can be good or evil. It's what we as humans make it, which is pretty much the case with everything ever. 

Including leggings. Leggings are cute. Leggings are fun. My sister has zebra-print leggings. That's cool. Also I would like to say that kids are exempt from this issue because they're just kids! Anything they wear is cute and generally not evil. Leggings are warm. They look cute underneath a skirt or dress and when it's too cold to go running in just shorts, leggings go well underneath shorts to keep your legs warm. When you're at home relaxing, there is nothing wrong with wearing leggings because they are so comfortable. Believe me. I know. Also leggings are good to work out in, sometimes even without shorts on top. But it's just when you take these leggings and wear them as a fashion statement day in and day out and don't wear a dress or a skirt or running shorts on top of them and you show every person ever your butt (even, and sometimes especially, those who don't want to see it) and then you keep doing it forever, is when it becomes less and less okay, even though it's cool. Cool things aren't always right. Example: bowing down to a chocolate bunny (see Veggietales: Rack, Shack, and Benny). 

Maybe this is my soapbox because I keep coming up with things to say about it. But it's not like leggings are the only way to make the male kind stumble, either. It's like we (and by we I mean the girls against leggings as pants. We could start a group maybe. SALP - Society Against Leggings as Pants) are completely against leggings as pants and when we see it happen we are in an uproar, but other things don't bother us so much. Short-shorts? Nah. Midriff? Not such a big deal. Ankles? Well...it may have a been a hundred or more years since that was considered scandalous. But leggings as pants? Shut the front door, somebody's about to get judged real hard. 

I've seen blog posts to encourage me and other Christian girls from wearing leggings as pants and to justify our life choices in deciding not to wear them, and I've heard so many people talk about how leggings are not pants. And I agree with all of them. Leggings are not pants. But let's just be a little more soft maybe. 

Conclusion: Hey guys, let's be nice people. Even though leggings are not pants and silly girls think they are (every single day all winter long), that does not make them awful people. Have they committed murder? Probably not. And if they have, we should probably worry a little bit more about that than about their clothing choices. And also...we sin too every once in a while. We do bad things. Sometimes we even do them on purpose. These girls just do different bad things, which does not make the things that we do less bad, and these ladies don't always completely know how awful it is or how awful we think it is. And also, we are not the judge of whether they go to heaven or not. Just saying. I am not every girl's ultimate judge. God is. He is also my ultimate judge. Remember that.

That is all. 

Thank you for your time. 

Love, 

Lauralicious