A Prize

Ladies--ponder this with me for a few minutes.  It's something I've been learning about the incredible men in our lives.  

Did you know that men are more visual than we are?  I've heard that concept for as long as I can remember, but now that I've seen it in practice, it's come alive and I think I finally see it.  Our appearance in every way is a powerful gift to our men to either honor them or not.  

I've grew up thinking that effortless beauty was the best kind.  So the concept of a man being blessed by my beauty was mortifying because in my mind, if I didn't wake up with that beauty first thing in the morning, then I didn't have what it takes to please him. 

Thankfully, the Lord and my wonderful Jeff have helped me see the truth that I had painfully twisted.  God is so good--there is freedom in the truth.  The game changer for me as I've thought about my beauty affects Jeff is this--what men are blessed most by is our effort.  What a beautiful clarification.  That means I don't need to be paralyzed by my inadequacy until I'm a certain size, or until I finally meet the standard for perfection.  If Jeff can tell that I've invested time and effort into being beautiful to him, he's deeply blessed.

Jeff takes me on these extravagant dates where I sometimes accidentally find out that he's done all this research and planning on the front end.  Seeing the effort and heart that went into the time might be my favorite part of the date.  It deeply blesses me.  It almost doesn't matter if we see any whales on our whale watching tour, or if the potatoes are slightly burned when I know that in his joy, he's cooked them for me and he never cooks.  In the same way with my appearance, if he can see that I have been delighted to invest time and heart into it, that's the key.

So I'm on the road to meeting my standard for beauty, but he's right there with me and he's happy and blessed even right now when I'm still far from where I want to be.  What a treasure to know a new way to bless this man!  I want his smile and to be his prize.  I want to be the best version of myself for him.  What a huge blessing (aka how like the Lord) that Jeff doesn't wait to accept me till I've finally hit perfection, he's blessed by me now.