Ugly is your myth, beauty is your truth

​God has followed me around all my life. He has followed me when I was alternately trying to find him and earn him. And behind me and in front of me and beside me he has been saying all that time, I am already here - I am already yours.

I am closer to God than ever, but God isn't closer to me than ever. God is right where he has always been - right beside me - waiting for me to get out of our way. Waiting for me to experience in him that which he has experienced in me since long before he breathed his image into me.

Because it's his image breathed into me, my presence has always been enough for God. It's his greatest joy. But because we too often long for - and expect - so much more from each other than presence, it's hard to grasp that about God.

It's hard to imagine that just being with me is enough. It's hard to imagine God is really there because it's hard to imaging he would want to be.

So, I go on trying harder; I search deeper.

It's hard to get ourselves out of the way. Maybe it's the hardest thing ever - to let go of shame and guilt and past. But when we are willing to do that, when we are willing to wade through the carnage of it all, when the dust clears you might just find someone standing there. Someone glad to be there. Someone thankful not that you found them, but that you discovered you never had to look.

And you begin to wonder if God might be there too.

There is so much beauty in this world. We often miss it while we focus on all that we believe is not beautiful about us. We miss it when we insist that we can outperform with beauty outwardly all that we've come to believe is ugly within us.

Then one day we are reminded ugly is something we see; it is never something that we are. Ugly is a myth we create about ourselves and about one another. Beauty is truth. It has been since the day God looked upon us and saw that we were good.

We quit seeing that, not God.

And so, we went on, try harder and searching deeper for something that was already there.

You are not ugly. You are beautiful. Maybe today is the day you will see that. You will see that and discover all that you've been standing in the way of.

All that has been there all along.