Five Things Every Girl Should Know

Unlocking The Traps -- Fulfilling Our Destinies

Posted by Kathy on Dec 3, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

In the next five weeks before the New Year, I wanted to remind you of the things that get in your way, the universal traps that every woman experiences.

Most importantly, I want to help you find the keys to breakout of these common traps and to come into the New Year with full knowledge that you are God’s fierce creation–a combination of power and beauty that crowned our world.

Today, I would like to talk about the trap that keeps us from walking in confidence. Why we often don’t feel beautiful—causing us to seek recognition and affirmation in ways that may not honor our creation.

Five Things Every Girl Should Know
The number one thing you need to know about being a girl is: You Have A Target On Your Back—an enemy that prowls this earth looking for ways to deceive and rob you of your inheritance so that you will never know your own power.  He knows that when you not aware of your own origins of beauty, genius and calling, you are disconnected from yourself and your God given power.

This struggle with beauty and worth goes back to our roots and the fingerprints of our creator. There we find the great Artist who intentionally expressed his own image into the creation of all women. Women are God’s ultimate expression of his beauty here on earth. In the book, Captivating John & Stasi Eldredge say, “She is the crescendo, the final astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve….”

“Given the way creation unfolds, how it builds to ever higher and higher works of art, can there be any doubt that Eve is the crown of creation? Not an afterthought. Not a nice addition like an ornament on a tree. She is God’s final touch, his piece de résistance. She fills a place in the world nothing and no one else can fill”. page 25.

When we acknowledge that have a target on our backs it changes everything.  The fight for our self worth is not just in our heads as it is a universal experience for all women. We are survivors of a war waged against us since the beginning of time.

So if we are God’s signatures of beauty on earth—why aren’t most of us buying it?  No matter what we weigh or how much makeup we apply, most of us do not walk in the knowledge that we are beautiful. Our story is all about the truth of where we come from and how we were made. When it is altered, so is our future story of what we will become.

From the beginning it is clear that the great Narcissist has hated our gender. We represent everything he desires–to be the most beautiful creation of all. He knows that if he can disconnect us from own beauty and worth, we will never come into our own power. By tearing down what is uniquely beautiful in each of us, he steals God’s expression through us.

For hundreds of years the fashion, media and cosmetic industries have used 29 points to compare us. They call these points the golden ratio—the perfect equation.  Breaking us down into 29 points that take our creation to task.

A girl like me knows that I will never be a beauty. Or at least not in the sense that girls dream of. God made me a Picasso, one eye smaller, one leg shorter, one hip twisted. I arrived here with buckteeth and an affinity to gain weight like most people drink water. The golden ratio is not in my equations.

For fleeting moments I have felt beautiful, lovely, and sparkly. At one point in my life I lost weight, ate nothing, and exercised like a fiend. I made friends with clothing sizes I had never seen before.  My pictures show a girl not really believing, but striving on a treadmill of beauty.  Those pictures make me ache for that girl–she operating on fumes.

My awakening to my own beauty didn’t come until much later, and strangely as a plus-sized middle-aged woman, who began to finally put the pieces together. It is not a one size fits all kind of process, but at some point I began making peace with what I had, finding what tools I had been given and developing a much different sense of what beauty really is.

My definition of beauty here is something that transcends the physical. It is the full presence of a woman-her soul and spirit.  It is the kind of beauty that takes your breath away. I am thinking most of us would have found Mother Theresa’s presence very beautiful.  I remember once buying nosebleed tickets to listen to Pavarotti whose voice never failed to move me to tears.  We all recognize beauty in others, we just need to trust it exists in us.

Someone once told me that every woman he had ever met had something about her that was beautiful. Evidently, he had never heard of the golden ratio, choosing rather to look for evidence of God’s signature.

At some point in my thirties, I began to trust in this new image of beauty, and finally began to feel beautiful. Interesting, Huh?  I hadn’t lost a single pound, had no plastic surgery–I just walked into the room a little differently.

And here is the second part of the secret, we were never meant to stand alone in this battle. We are all part of a great composition–together we are a work of art. Where did we every get the idea that we needed to be the most beautiful? When did we begin to compete with each other to get the affirmation that was already ours?

From our childhoods, talking mirrors have answered us when we asked, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most beautiful of all?” Our beauty, and self worth becoming something to compete for, is alienating us from the other pieces of the composition.

There is no clearer picture of this battle than the one we see waging in young American girls, who have cosmetic surgery to look like Britney Spears or Angela Jolie, changing the very things that make them unique.  It is like a great musical score changing chords to sound like another song.

My daughter and I used to read Phenomenal Woman, by Maya Angelou out loud together, complete with body moevements. It never failed to make us laugh when we recited it and made us feel awesome.  It is one of my favorites and I hope it will become one of yours and share it with your daughters.

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit
a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Maya Angelou

So here is some thoughts for you to think about between now and next week.

The key to unlock this first trap is to act as though all of the above is true and begin by putting yourself back on the list. Ask yourself these questions and enlist help if needed from your friends, family or husband.

1.  What is beautiful about you? What physical attributes do you have that are spectacular?

2. What is compelling about you? What soulful qualities or attributes connect you to the great composition?

3. How do you enter a room?  Do you immediately head for the back or do you walk into a room like you are captivating?

4. What is the story have you bought into regarding your own beauty and self worth?

5. If you could wave a magic wand what would change about how you see yourself?

You and I are all part of a signature of beauty— we are phenomenal.

The key is to believe our beauty and value is already established in our creation. We are God’s Pièce de résistance that made the enemy tremble and rock with jealousy.

Now that is power.
Now that is beautiful.