We are living in a time where what you see is not what you get.

Everyone is starting to look the same thanks to filters and facetune. We all have perfectly smooth, unblemished skin, with bright white eyes and teeth. Our noses are all a little smaller, and the contour on our cheeks is amplified with our secret apps. Even our waistlines are shrinking right before our followers’ eyes. Heck, we look perfectly plastic on social media, and then in real life, we look like a living, breathing humans.

And let me be clear… I’m guilty.

I’ve fallen into the trap of multiple photo editing apps, not just the professional ones like Lightroom and such, but I’ve been around the block with facetune and snow… and I didn’t just use the preset filters, I did the whole nine yards of slimming, smoothing, mattifying, and whitening… I’m guilty too.

So this isn’t a post to slam all the people out there who are being as unauthentic as I’ve been. Which is ironic considering I wrote a piece for a book called the Authentic Woman… I know… shameful.

Here’s the thing. It starts as an innocent “let’s see what I can do with this app.” And then before you know it, you’re telling yourself that you actually look more like you when you do all the edits. I mean, that’s the lie I was believing. I actually thought I looked more like me after a session in facetune than how I looked in a raw iPhone click. Like, what?! How dumb 🙈

When I was in Paris, my best friend had what we call a “Coming to Jesus meeting”. This is when a close friend or loved one comes to you with the purest intentions to verbally knock some sense into you. And she did. She helped me realize just how ridiculous it is to talk about being real and loving yourself while posting pictures of myself that have been heavily edited. Like… bad.

And that really stuck with me… I was basically talking out both sides of my mouth, saying one thing and doing another.

This morning, as I was scrolling Instagram, I saw photo after photo with the same editing techniques that I used to use. At first, I was just kinda unphased, because you know it’s 2018, and this is just how we do social media these days. But then I started to feel really sad. And I started wondering if the beautiful people in these pictures were believing a lie that I had once believed… the lie that you can post it if it’s not perfect. And in my mind at the time was that perfect meant, blemish free and magazine worthy.

Just like it all started with an innocent app download and a curious mind of “I wonder how I can tweak this”, it can all stop with an app delete and a curious mind of “I wonder if they will like me as I am.” I promise you, they will.

I challenge you to choose authenticity over society’s rules on beauty.

I challenge you to make a little extra room for yourself to be your real, raw, unfiltered self.

You were wonderfully and fearfully made in the image of God. You’re already perfect and without blemish in His eyes.

Proverbs 31 has always been one of my favorite chapters in the Bible because it’s like a training manual for Christian Women. It gives us a really straightforward look at what makes us valuable and worthy in the eyes of Jesus. It’s not our outer beauty. It’s not our material things. But it’s the way we raise our family, how we talk to others, how we prepare our home and take care of others, and how we fear the Lord.

It’s so easy to get sucked into this world of being picture perfect, when in reality, life isn’t picture perfect. Life is messy, and social media doesn’t really allow space for it to look that way, but it’s reality. Speaking back to the book I wrote for, The Authentic Woman. They are currently doing a campaign for Instagram vs. Reality. I really want to encourage you to check it out. It’s real and personal, and it’s women just like us who are taking the risk bare their unfiltered face and self online in an effort to show women that it’s okay to be just you.

Just you is already enough.

I challenge you to embrace the mess and fall in love with your perfectly flawed and blemished life. No ones stopping you but you.

– the Wife