When I didn't have any hair, I actually had people tell me that I was beautiful. I look back at pictures from that time and I was NOT beautiful. I was pale, my eyebrows and eyelashes were sparse, my chest took on the form of boulders (from my expanders) and peach fuzz was in patches on my head. It was hardly the look of a super model. At the time, I was pretty sure the beauty comments were desperate attempts to make me feel a little less like a monster.
I made the decision pretty early on that I did not want to cover my head with a wig. This is a very personal decision for those that must walk this road, but my reasoning behind it was that I didn't want to pretend that it wasn't happening to me. I wanted people to ask {sometimes} so I could share how God was bringing me through it. Don't get me wrong, the vain thoughts were always there. Will I have an alien head? Will I need to draw on eyebrows to frame my face and how do I even do that? Will my husband find me at all attractive?
Then the Lord showed me verses like “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.”(1 Peter 3:4 NIV84)“ and ”…beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. (Proverbs 31:30 NIV84)“ I clung to these verses during that time because I knew that something beautiful was happening within me as my outer self was becoming less and less attractive. I am still not sure if people were just trying to be nice. But I hope the beauty they were seeing was the joy that the Lord was providing me as we spent more and more time together.
{This photo and others like it were taken by my friend, Josh Shirlen. Although they are sometimes hard to look at, I am grateful that I will always have these visual reminders of my journey.}
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