Thoughts inspired by Madeleine L'Engle

“This winter for the first time I have felt beautiful. It is a good feeling, and I am glad for Hugh’s sake and also (and most important) because it frees me to think less about myself and more about other people. I am surer of myself. I know that I look well, so I don’t have to worry about it, or feel self-conscious, and I can give more to other people.” – Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

How ironic and true this is, and on so many levels. Yet how easily this notion is abused! We do feel freer to focus on others when we feel good enough about ourselves that we don’t need to constantly be looking to our own interests. I used to think that the television show, “What Not to Wear” was pretty vain. After all, the whole purpose of the show is to take a woman who is horribly dressed (or barely dressed!) and give her a new wardrobe, while teaching her to buy fashionable, flattering clothes and wear makeup well. I was always amazed at the last segment, which involved an interview with the woman weeks after her makeover. Every single one said that she had new confidence, and talked about some way in which it had positively affected her life and career. How shallow, I thought. These women have a life-changing experience because of some clothes and Maybelline. But when I experienced the same thing in a different way, I understood.

The summer I was 20 years old, I lived in Paris. That alone made it a dreamy summer, though living there does cause disenchantment with the City of Lights. I lived with three other girls – my fellow interns with a missionary organization. The very first week of the internship was spent in a gite – a rentable home – beyond the outskirts of the Parisian métro line. We lived with some incredible and inspiring missionaries to France and Italy. It was a week of intense discipleship. Entering this internship, I had two years of a degree in theology under my belt. That basically amounted to a full brain with a lot of Scripture, a lot of facts, and a lot of explanations. It is said that the longest journey is traversing the twelve inches between the head and the heart, and I was a case in point. I knew a whole lot (probably much less than I thought I knew) and yet it was not true in my heart. Though in my mind I acknowledged all of these lovely theological concepts, humans live from the heart, and I lived as if none of them were true. The discoveries that week would be fleshed out over and over in my life that summer.

One day during out week at the gite, we were given a two-column checklist, just for our personal benefit. The question at the top read, “Are you living as an Orphan?” We checked off the statements that best described our experience. One side was labeled the “living as an orphan” side, while the other side was “living as a daughter/son.” I remember one side contrasting “Feels condemned, guilty, and unworthy before God and others” with “Feels loved, forgiven, and totally accepted because Christ’s merit really clothes him.” Even though I could have probably explained the basis for that from my head, I had never truly experienced that truth in my heart.

To be known and to be loved in spite of that, I think, is the greatest human desire. I do not want to be loved at first sight. I want to be known – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and loved in spite of all that. We’ve all seen those relationships that end horribly because the people didn’t get to know each other before they started dating. When the tough stuff – the bad, the ugly – comes out, the relationship ends. “I thought it was love!” one says dejectedly. No, Shakespeare has already told us that “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.” There is no love without truly knowing a person, and willing to love no matter what skeletons come out of the closet. “Till death do us part.” When I discovered – experienced – God’s love for me like this the first time, it was life-changing. The verse in Romans became blazingly alive to me. Paul talks about how humans rarely will be willing to die in the place of another, but that some may perhaps die for a very good person. “But God,” he says, “demonstrated his love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

It may seem like a little thing. God didn’t wait until we were clean and pure, washed by the bloody sacrifice of Christ, to love us. He looked down at his beloved handiwork that we had messed up, and saw us wallowing in our messed-up-ness, and loved us so much and desired us so much that he chose to do something about it. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – complete in them/himself – wanted us so badly that they broke that perfect communion. Christ took on our brokenness and died and experienced ultimate separation from God so that we wouldn’t have to. And it was all motivated by love for us. God didn’t wait until we were clean to love us – it is because he loved us that Christ came to make us fit to be in His presence. The fact that Christ’s mission was motivated by love for something so utterly unlovable as me in my selfishness and sin, changed me. Not in my mind – these are things that short-circuit the mind – but in my heart. I, the undesirable and unlovable, was and am desired and loved by God. I’ve never really gotten over that. (I don’t ever want to.)

Back to “What Not to Wear.” These women who find that they can be attractive by simply changing their wardrobe and makeup discover a wonderful thing – they are desirable and noticeable. They feel beautiful. This changes one’s outlook on life. On the spiritual level – Christ’s work shows me that He loves me and desires me. Knowing that I am loved changes the way I live. When we know we are desirable, attractive, and lovable, we don’t feel the need to “wave our own flag” by pointing out our accomplishments, or making sure people know why we’re great. When I do those things (and we are all tempted to make sure we are noticed), it is because I am not actually believing that I am worth being loved. And when I do these things, I am in bondage to myself and meeting my needs. I can not focus on another. But when I truly, deeply have an understanding of Christ’s love for me – and not for any innate goodness that I have to maintain – it frees me. I no longer need to be noticed for every little thing I do. I am free to care for others. Just as Madeleine L’Engle wrote, when I feel beautiful and loved, I am freed to think more about others and less about myself.

This can, of course, be taken to an extreme. When I feel beautiful and secure in my physical appearance, as in my relationship with God, I am free to give myself to others – that is a full beauty. This overflows to love and give life, and does not ask to receive, but gives fully with joy. But there are two easy imitations of this.

One imitation of beauty is vanity. Vanity is not an outpouring of love, but a projection of my own inflated self-worth onto others. On the days when I am vain, I think that everyone notices the perfect way my hair is styled, the stylish outfit I have put together, or the way my makeup makes my eyes look just the right shade of blue.

There is an imitation of beauty that, rather than pouring outward, draws inward, needing to be filled. It takes and empties, and rather than evoking love in its beholder, it invokes the insatiable thirst of lust that pretends to give while it ravenously takes and empties. Maybe lust isn’t the right word, because I don’t just mean this in a sexual way. I think of lust as something that is empty and sees and desires to be filled by something. Like a vampire, it takes drains the life from the very thing it is satiated – never satisfied – with. In this sense, girls can lust after popularity. Joanna can become friends with Rita so that she can get in the right group of girls that includes Debbie and Susan. Once she’s in, she hangs out with Susan so that she’s “in” with the cheerleaders, etc. Joanna doesn’t care a whit about Rita or Susan, but about getting to be “in” with the cheerleaders. They were just another rung up the ladder. Christians can build marriages on lust. A man and a woman who are looking to be completed or satisfied by each other will find that she does not love him but is using him to get emotional and relational fulfillment. He does not love her but is using her to get sexual fulfillment. For both of them – this is lust.

But true beauty is felt in the soul, and it is a gift. It is received from Christ – and it is full and overflowing. We may be easily deceived to mistake the one for the other, but when we do that, it is not our naïveté that confuses us – it is our own emptiness desiring to take. True beauty fills and satisfies, and the only response to it is to overflow in love. Isn’t that exactly what Jesus did to demonstrate his love in the incarnation? His love overflowed and he took on flesh, while we were yet sinners.