"Who could love a girl with a name like Beezus?"

"Who could love a girl with a name like Beezus?" quipped a frustrated Beezus Quimby from her bunk bed in the movie Ramona and Beezus to which came her younger sister's hesitant reply, "Jesus?"

Ramona may not have been sure if her answer was correct and, though it didn't seem to help Beezus at that moment, I think it was a perfect answer. This led me to think how many times I have asked similar questions and how many times I have rejected that answer as well.

I love the world "beautiful". I am immediately attracted to it when I see it written somewhere. It is in the title of the song that I felt best described me when I was in highschool (Beautiful Somehow). It is my daddy's nick name for me. It is the name of my perfume. A form of it is part of the title of my favorite fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast."

As a child I refused to dress up at Halloween as something ugly; it was my one time of year to be "beautiful." I could barely wait to wear makeup so I could be "beautiful," while as an adult I rarely go without makeup. I long for beauty and am on an endless search to find it. So, for years I have continued to ask and He has continued to answer:

"Who could love a girl with a face like mine?" "Jesus"

"Who could love a girl that acts as silly as I do?" "Jesus"

"Who could love a girl who messes up as much as I do?" "Jesus"

"Who could love a girl that weighs this much?" "Jesus"

"Who could love a girl ______________________?" (fill in the blank) "JESUS"

And still so very often...so very, very often, my response has been the same as Beezus's... as if He isn't enough.

Yet, I am learning.

I am learning that no matter what I do, beauty is still in the eye of the beholder and therefore some will behold me as beautiful and some will behold me as far less. I am learning that no matter how much I work out or how I fix my make up, I will never be the world's standard of beautiful. I am learning that it is only the Beholder who made me that counts. I am learning that He is not only absolutely and completely enough, but He is Beauty itself.

Ann Voskamp chases the moon and then reflects, "I kneel here, needing to know how a hung rock radiates -- ethereal? This beauty is not natural, not of nature. This beauty is not merely form and color but God's 'shining garment's hem.' Beauty is the voice endlessly calling and so we see, so we reach. Doubt the philosophies, doubt the prophecies, doubt the Pharisees (especially the ones seen in mirrors), but who can doubt this, Beauty? Beauty requires no justification, no explanation; it simply is and transcends. See beauty and we know it in the marrow, even if we have no words for it: Someone is behind it, in it. Beauty Himself completes" (One Thousand Gifts, chapter 7).

She continues on to explain that she worships the God that is present within all of these things she finds beautiful, but does not deify those things themselves. It is very different for one to consider the natural world divine, as a pantheist would, than for one to see divine God present in all things. Yet, is that not what I do when I look at the world around me, deciding that I am not enough and Jesus couldn't love me? Do I not unintentionally deify the objects and people around me by whom I measure others? I believe I do.

My endless search for beauty has been erroneously driven by the notion that beauty could be found somewhere around or inside of me when all the time beauty has only been found in the One who deems me beautiful as He dwells within me. My search, therefore, continues, but this time I know what my object of beauty is. I seek Beauty Himself. For He is "infinite and without end, without jaw or sockets, everywhere eye. The face of the moon, the face of the doe, the face of derelict, the face of pain. His the countenance that seeps up the world, face without limitation...All beauty is only reflection. And whether I am conscious of it or not, any created thing of which I am amazed, it is the glimpse of His face to which I bow down...True, authentic Beauty requires of us, lays claim to us, and it is this, the knees bent, the body offered in obedience. A pantheist's god is a passive god, but omnipresent God is Beauty who demands worship, passion, and the sacrifice of a life, for He owns it" (One Thousand Gifts, chapter 7).

Beezus's question sort of reminded me of Paul in Romans, chapter 7 as he exclaimed, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" With him, I now reply to my own previous questions, "Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!"