Beauty Begins: Making Peace with Your Reflection - Softcover

Shook, Chris; Shook Alpha, Megan

 
9781601427311: Beauty Begins: Making Peace with Your Reflection
Softcover
ISBN 10: 160142731X ISBN 13: 9781601427311
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

You are, and always have been, beautiful. 

“Beauty begins. That’s the point of this book. Our understanding of beauty got started somewhere and somehow, and probably due to someone. Now that may have been a good start, but then again it may not have. But regardless of what your past looks like, we want to offer up this word of hope: It’s never too late to make peace with your reflection.” 

We live in a culture that’s obsessed with beauty. Walk by any magazine stand or turn on a television and you’ll be bombarded with the images and ideals that our culture believes are the epitome of what it means to be beautiful. And if you’re like most women, you’ve probably spent countless hours trying to measure up to this standard whether you realize it or not. 
 
But if you don’t make peace with your reflection, you’ll end up declaring war on yourself.
 
That’s where mother-daughter team Chris Shook and Megan Shook Alpha want to help. In Beauty Begins, they challenge each of us to trade the pressure of perfection for God's perfect love. Poignant, relevant, and relatable, Beauty Begins is for every woman who wants to reclaim what it means to be truly beautiful. 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

CHRIS SHOOK is the co-author (with her husband, Kerry) of two New York Times bestsellers, One Month to Live and Be the Message. Together they minister at Woodlands Church outside Houston, Texas. Her daughter, MEGAN SHOOK ALPHA, is a graduate of Baylor University and works as a pastor to students at Woodlands Church.

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Note to the Reader 


This book is unique in two ways. First, this book was written by a mother and daughter. Second, it is designed for girls and women of all ages. We address struggles that all women deal with daily, and we also explore the unique relationship between mothers and daughters. 

In our society it is impossible not to feel inadequate at times. It’s hard to make it through even one day without feeling insecure about ourselves! As a mother and daughter living in the same hurting world you live in, we will share our struggles, our joys, and how we have learned to embrace this tough yet rewarding life. We aren’t saying we have figured it all out, but we have discovered some practical ways to love the person God made us to be. 

As mother and daughter we’ve shared many of the experiences described in this book. For simplicity we has become I in the writing except for a few instances when clarification was necessary. Regardless of your age or life stage, we believe the ideas we present will resonate in your heart. 

The main thing we want you to know is that it is never too late for beauty to begin in your life. 


You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 
—John 8:32, nkjv 

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. 
—C. S. Lewis 

The Distorted Reflection
Beauty Begins in the Heart of God 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. 
—Ecclesiastes 3:11 

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves. 
—François de La Rochefoucauld 

Do you feel beautiful? It’s a simple, straightforward question. But it may be one of the most significant, revealing questions you could ever answer. 

I’m not talking about all the cliché answers to the question. 

I’m not interested in how you think you should answer the 
question. What I’m really asking is, “How do you feel about 
your reflection?” When you look in the mirror, what is the first 
emotion that hits you? Is it a feeling of complete contentment? 

Does your reflection fill you with a deep sense of peace or a 
deep sense of inadequacy? I mean, most of the time do you feel 
beautiful? 

I think the majority of women, if we’re completely honest, would admit that we don’t feel beautiful much of the time. Recently our women’s ministry team at Woodlands Church surveyed hundreds of young women and asked this question: “If you could change anything about the way you look, would you?” More than 70 percent of them answered yes and went on to name all the things they would change. We also asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how beautiful do you think you are, with one being ‘I can’t think of anything I like about myself’ and ten being ‘I am completely content.’” Only 11 percent of the girls said, “I’m completely content and at peace with my reflection.” 

The vast majority of young ladies who took the survey are committed Christians who are very involved in church and have great friends. I have found, however, that this struggle to feel beautiful is almost as prevalent among Christian women as it is among non-Christian women. The truth is, almost every woman battles to feel beautiful every single day. Most of us have never made peace with our reflections. 

Stealing Beauty 
Making peace with your reflection is so important, because if you fail to do that, you will declare war on yourself! Generations of women have become casualties in this war on self-worth. The battle to feel beautiful has contributed to everything from low self-esteem and poor body image to eating disorders and self-harm. 

• Ninety-one percent of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control             their weight through dieting; 22 percent dieted “often” or “always.”
• Eighty-six percent of young women reported the onset of an eating disorder by age twenty;   43 percent reported the onset between the ages of sixteen and twenty.
• Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents.
• Ninety-five percent of those who have eating disorders are between the ages of twelve and 
  twenty-five.
• Twenty-five percent of college-aged women engage in bingeing and purging as a weight-           management technique.
• The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is twelve times higher than the death         rate associated with all other causes of death for females fifteen to twenty-four years old.6 

We need to wake up and realize we have a dangerous enemy 
who has declared war on us. Jesus tells us in the gospel of John 
that our enemy, Satan, has a purpose for our lives. 


The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10) 

Jesus warns us that Satan is a thief whose strategy is to steal our self-worth, kill our passion for life, and destroy our hopes and dreams. 
On the other hand, Christ has come not to steal our self-worth but to fill our self-worth. Christ has come to give us “life . . . to the full,” and that means He wants us to feel full of beauty, full of joy, full of peace, and full of value and meaning! 
The Bible also lets us know the first step in the Enemy’s strategy to steal our true beauty. He always starts with a lie. In the gospel of John, chapter 8, Jesus tells us that Satan is “a liar and the father of lies” (verse 44). 

The world’s oldest liar gets us to forget that we were God’s idea in the first place. We don’t always remember that there is a very real God on a very real throne who calls us His beloved. The slithering enemy convinces us that our Maker’s love is never enough, never was. And Satan continually asks us to consider what others are thinking of us.7 
—Jennifer Dukes Lee 


Satan will constantly whisper destructive lies in your thoughts. They go something like this: “You’re not beautiful. You’re not valuable. You’re not worth anything.” Then he gets really specific with his lies. “You’re too fat.” “You’re too tall.” “You’re too short.” “Your hair is too dull.” “Your nose is too big.” “Your lips are too small.” “Your eyes aren’t the right color.” And the lies go on and on. 

It’s all lies! If you start to believe the lies, you will base your actions and decisions on a foundation of lies and never discover your true beauty. 
But Jesus tells us the truth...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
160142731X
ISBN 13 
9781601427311
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41
Madrid
Madrid
Spanien

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