***UPDATE for the UPDATE: ACTUALLY, my friend Jen fixed it for me. FINALLY. Sorry. I’m pretty sure this actually works.
**UPDATE: The code for the button doesn’t work yet. Please bear with me as I figure it out!! Also, you can post the post any time and for now, just put a link in your post to my site. Thanks for your participation and your patience.
Most days I don’t even live in the same county as Beauty.
I wake up, pull on my Asics and my workout pants to walk the dog. I brush my teeth before we go out, just for my own sanity and I glance in the mirror.
Then I wish I hadn’t. If it’s the week leading up to my period I’ve got acne. And I’m bloated.
(I’m talking like 7 pounds of bloat. Thank you, Age Thirty-Five.)
We go out for about 30 minutes, her leading, and me thinking. Sometimes it takes me the whole half hour to beat down the voices that tell me
I’m ugly.
I’m weak.
I’m fat and out of shape.
I’m old.
Sometimes I never beat them down and I come back in the house, body warm from my walk the voices still loud in my cold ears.
I seem to be able to find beauty in the world day after day but I struggle to find it in myself.
I’ve asked five women to share with us all what they think about beauty. They’ve written about their own struggles, their own heart aches, their own 
disappointments. And they are going to be sharing it HERE all week beginning Monday the 15th.
I am SO EXCITED!
Some of them you might know, and some of them you might never have heard of. They’re from Arkansas, Texas, South Africa, South Carolina and Colorado. They are just like you. Some of them are moms, some are not, one is a military wife, two are authors, and one I met last fall as a result of sharing my story.
Maybe I’ve asked them to write on this because it’s a personal struggle of mine. Maybe I’ve asked them because I love them. Or maybe I’ve asked because I’m really, honestly curious about what they think about beauty.
And I’m curious about what YOU think too.
I’m going to propose a project for you all: Write a blog post about beauty. Your thoughts, your pain, your triumphs. It can be outer beauty, inner beauty, what you hate, what you love. Anything. Be creative. It can even be a single photo.
Write it sometime between NOW and the end of next week (Friday, March 19). Copy the HTML for this button into the body of your post so it appears as a button with a link. EMAIL me the link to your post in an email to sarah at sarahmarkley dot com. Put “BEAUTY POST LINK” in the subject line. On Friday the 19th, I will compile the links and put them into a blog post sometime the following week for you all to read what the rest of this community has to think about beauty.
We are all full of beauty.
Yes, you.
Even me.
Wow…beauty. Boy do I ever struggle with it! I am not even sure that I can write about my thoughts on beauty. Others beauty I definately could – my own? I don’t know.
Wow! Beautiful. Thank you.
I am really excited for this next week! I have been majorly telling struggling in this area SO MUCH this year. Because of gained weight and other effects of stress and not feeling like I have anything to wear, whenever my husband tells me I look beautiful (which, being the awesome guy he is he does so maybe three times a day) I usually put my head down and shake my head. that is a response I need to change and I need to change it before I actually lose the weight(although I still want to work in losing the weight). I want to believe the words my husband tells me and I want to believe how God sees me.
Because this is also about my heart.
I am really excited for this next week! I have been majorly struggling in this area SO MUCH this year. Because of gained weight and other effects of stress and not feeling like I have anything to wear, whenever my husband tells me I look beautiful (which, being the awesome guy he is he does so maybe three times a day) I usually put my head down and shake my head. that is a response I need to change and I need to change it before I actually lose the weight(although I still want to work in losing the weight). I want to believe the words my husband tells me now and I want to believe how God sees me now.
Because this is also about my heart.
oops!! I didn’t mean to double post….
Great point Heidi…
thank you for adding the “share on facebook” option.
Today’s blog tugged on my heart to share that I found a faith based website called findingbalance.com…it has so many helpful tips on body image. It has helped me so much.
What a great subject for us to unearth and discuss!
I’ve discovered I feel truly beautiful when I’m at peace with God and spending my time communing with Him.
Beginning to pray what the Lord wants to say. Being beautiful is something every woman struggles with. Even those that say they don’t. The desire to be appreciated, and beautiful.
oohh, girl. i can’t wait. yes, i struggle w/beauty. boy, do i ever. the inward kind more than the outward. actually,if i’m being honest, i struggle with both.
ugh.
this is gonna be good.
i wish i could hug your neck. : )
This sounds like a wonderful idea Sarah! I can’t wait to read all of it!
Opps… I meant to ask, do we post it to our blogs at any time?
I found this interesting website when googling something. I thought I’d pass it along since it deals with beauty: http://operationbeautiful.com/
Love this idea. I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s thoughts.
Sarah, I just wrote a blog post on this. I know it’s been awhile, but I’ve been working through some stuff. Technically it is not solely about beauty for me, but self-worth in general. Stop by and read it if you have a chance. I have finally learned how to get rid of those negative voices in my head and when they do pop up, I’ve discovered some tools to combat them. At least for me it has been working.
I have the amazing ability to see beauty in everything…except for me. I hear those same voices, telling me, “You’re ugly”, “You’re fat”…the list of insults are endless.
But i see beauty in my surroundings….i wonder why i am so hard on myself?
Love it. I struggle with this all the time – too bad I wrote my post for a certain little site we both know of for next month!
i’m so excited about this. my heart needs to hear these messages.
I think I’ll join in on this one. : ) I love your blog, by the way.
I’m joining in! I don’t know if I will do a post, but I will definitely put the button on my sidebars!
I follow you – @rockiesfan01)
Is one of the girls Ashleigh @ Heart and Home? Just guessing – you said one is a military wife and that one lives in CO (like me) – fits Ashleigh!
Thank you Sarah! Your blog is very encouraging to me! (and your tweets
Blessings,
Chare
sorry everyone. the code for the button isn’t working. i’m getting chad to work on it tonight. i’ll but the right one up later! =)
SO excited to do this. I NEED to. I have a daughter of my own now and I don’t want her to struggle the way I do. Since her birth I have been seeking to redefine beauty for myself, for her.
Thank you for the opportunity and the inspiration.
This is such a wonderful thing! I’ve been struggling with the same thoughts about my own beauty, and this forces me to confront the issue head-on.I can’t wait to pour my heart out and read stories from other women.Thank you for this!
This is going to.be amazing to read.its a constant struggle of mine a daily battle when i see the mirror
I absolutely struggle with seeing the beauty in myself. Its funny because I read your post and think “but she’s gorgeous” and then I realize that people may think the same of me but the point is I struggle to see it in me. I don’t have a blog so I can’t share my thoughts there but I will say that this issue of beauty is very timely for me. I am walking through some serious body image issues at the moment. It is a moment by moment struggle EVERY single day for the last probably two weeks to beat down the voices and most days I don’t succeed very well. I keep trying though and I guess that’s the point. I look forward to reading the posts next week. Thank you for such a timely topic (though I know you didn’t specifically write it for me
)
I need to show up again on Monday. Boy is this ever right on. I feel like I can give you the right answer and teach my little guys, but deep down I don’t believe it in myself. If I am honest I would say I have a few traits that could be beauty, but overall, just ordinary. I’m coming back.
I struggle with those same thoughts in my head. What a great challenge! I’ll see about participating!
Ok, the code for the “badge” is working! WordPress appears to have “chewed” up the code after I put it in the post. It still looks all squished in Internet Explorer but I am tired of wrestling with the crazy thing
Thank you to Amber at http://therunamuck.com/. She doesn’t even realize I dug through her site code to figure out the proper way to display HTML code in a text box. Thanks AMBER!!
Ok you sarahmarkley.com fans, get all crazy with this badge on your sites! Email me if you have any trouble please, I will help out chad at markleytech dot com.
Chad
Sarah, my beautiful friend, your thoughts are always times perfectly. God is so amazing how He works, isn’t He? I’ve been on a downward spiral for the last few months regarding my inner and outer beauty. Last year, out of the blue, I began having severe, chronic neck and back pain. Bring you to present day and I have been diagnosed with severe Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory arthritis and ankylosing spondilitis. I’m on about 25 narcotics and anti-inflammatories, one of which is morphine and the other is chemo. Several of these medications make me gain weight and since last summer I have packed on an extra 45 lbs. I can’t hardly walk anymore, I have no energy and I’m still in constant pain. I feel about as ugly and useless as you can get. My husband constantly tells me how beautiful I am and my 3 little one’s always say how pretty their mommy is. Little things like that are huge to me and staying in the Word keeps me focused. I look forward to next week’s blog for sure! Keep up your insight and thoughts because what you say really speaks to a lot of us women. Love ya girl!
Thank you Amanda. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I will be praying for you today. =)
[...] I shall deflect no more. I’m taking on Sarah Markley’s project: to write about my struggles in beauty. So, let me take a deep breath, and I’ll dive [...]
Ironically I wrote a blog called “Don’t You Know Your Beautiful” the other day after inspired by the song from Seabird. http://bigfishministries.com/kristine/?p=2957
I’m thinking about what I want to write. Beauty has an important topic to me since I’ve become a mom of boys. I want them to understand what makes a girl beautiful (it’s not clothes or makeup!)
I’m so excited about this! This is something we call ALL relate to as women.
Here’s my input:
http://ordinaryinspirations.blogspot.com/2010/01/you-can-feel-pretty-as-mom-z.html
Hugs to you, my friend!
Traci
PS: I added your button but it links to your home blog page instead of thi post… do you want me to fix it?
I’m looking forward to reading all the post on Friday!
[...] …read the rest at Sarah’s blog and join the discussion. [...]
[...] is Sarah’s post that started it all for the blogosphere… but this is the post that crunched my soul into a [...]