I have never thought myself particularly pretty.

It is not that I don’t have confidence. I was raised to be a confident young woman. It is just that I have never been under any impression that I was able to win the favor of the world through my appearance.

To me, it seems that mirrors do not ever quite get it right, and I have long since given up hope that a photo would capture me the way the way I feel. You see, often times, I FEEL beautiful but photos don’t always reflect the reality of what is happening in my inner world.

Recently, I was privileged to be a part of local retreat where participants were prompted to ask God to teach them something about their identity in Christ. As part of the prayer team, I was honored to hear each woman’s story and to stand alongside of them in prayer as laid down the lies that they had believed about who they were in order to receive the freedom found in God’s love and their identity in light of that love.

After the prayer time, each woman went for a photo shoot, complete with wardrobe, makeup, and hair! The goal was to document the moment and to try to catch a glimpse of the beauty that God sees when He looks at each of his precious daughters.

I, along with the others, changed into swanky clothes, had my make-up and hair done, and stood in front of the (lovely & talented) photographer feeling vulnerable and awkward. I had just finished 3 hours of intense prayer time with others. I felt alive, strong and beautiful. I did not have much spunk left, so I just stood there, staring at the camera.

It is hard to explain how I felt when I saw all of our photos revealed the next morning. There were plenty of gasps and tears from the crowd. My friend said it was like a memorial, not a memorial of someone who had died, but of someone who was living and that we needed to remember.

When I saw myself, I thought “There she is, perfectly imperfect.” It’s not that I didn’t like my picture, but it’s not like I loved it either. It just was. Even with all of the fuss of professional make-up and hair, I still saw freckles, wrinkles, dark circles, age, and asymmetry. I quietly took my photo and waited until I got home to ask God to reveal to me what he wanted me to see.

I felt a quiet whisper in my soul, wabi-sabi.

I have a friend who is a potter who taught me about an aesthetic style sometimes found in pottery called wabi-sabi. I sensed that God wanted me to see myself in the way of wabi-sabi.

Wabi:  rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance.

Sabi:  beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its and wear, or in any visible repairs. (Wikipedia)

Wabi-sabi asks us to change our perception of the world. It challenges us to find value in natural simplicity and beauty in imperfections. What the world may label as flawed, wabi-sabi deems more interesting, giving it greater artistic value.

An example of wabi-sabi in creativity is the art of kintsugi, where cracked pottery is filled with gold dusted lacquer as a way to highlight the beauty of its age and damage rather than hiding it.

Did you catch that? The imperfection is not hidden, but highlighted. Wabi-sabi draws attention to the cracks in a tea cup as part of the beauty of the object. Wabi-sabi is the art of imperfection. It reveres authenticity above all else. To discover wabi-sabi is to find the singular beauty in something that may first look unattractive or even ugly.

In this next season, I am hoping to embrace the wabi-sabi way. I am asking God to help me to  heal me from my own self-criticism and praying that I could trust my “feeling” of pretty more than my picture of pretty. My hope is to learn how to embrace my flaws and to see myself and others as perfectly imperfect. I imagine this will be a practice that I will pursue for the rest of my life, but I believe it to be a worthy effort. I am wondering, would you like to join me?

Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7