We met at the playground after I hopped off the swing set and she hopped on.
“Can you push me?” Katelyn asked.
We were inseparable ever since that moment all the way up until we turned twenty years old. She was like my best friend, my sister actually, and we shared everything. In our teens Katelyn and I told each other we would get married at the same time, have children who would be best friends like us, and remain close forever.
But something happened.
Katelyn met a man who was three years older than her, whose birthday fell on the same date as hers. She thought their matching birthdays were a sign that “fate” was giving her. “He’s the one Ashley!” she would say.
After only dating him for three months, Katelyn said she was so in love and wanted to marry him. The deeper into the relationship the two got, the less I saw my friend. Eventually, she stopped answering my phone calls altogether.
I knew that wasn’t like her. I thought maybe I had done something wrong to turn her against me. But one day when she called me out of the blue at 3:00 in the morning, I found out exactly what was going on.
She was crying and could barely get her words out. But the gist of it was, the man she loved was beating her and she was scared for her life. She begged me not to say anything to anyone else.
Exactly five months from the day of that call, I found out my friend was engaged. She came over smiling with a huge rock on her finger.
I felt confused. I couldn’t understand why she was marrying a man who beat her up. When I asked, she made excuse after excuse for him and said, “It’ll be alright. I know he can change.”
He never did change.
They got married, had two children and he continued beating her until he put her in the hospital. She had to get stitches under her eye and a cast on her arm. When I visited it her, Katelyn looked like she had been in a car wreck. I just sat at her hospital bedside and cried.
I couldn’t figure out why anyone in their right mind would want to do that to her!
A few weeks later, when she was strong enough to talk, sit up, and eat on her own, Katelyn told me all about what happened. The details were more awful than I had imagined and I won’t go into them here. But something she told me still sticks out in my mind.
“When we were teenagers, I thought I would have an amazing husband because everybody told me I was so pretty,” she said.
Katelyn had caramel skin, hazel eyes, deep dimples, a great smile, curly hair, and the sweetest personality. She was stunningly beautiful, not just on the outside, but inside too.
She mistakenly assumed her outward beauty would guarantee that only the best men would come her way. But prettiness is not protection from doggish, roguish, violent men. Sadly, a lot of women think it is.
So they try to fix up the outside. They spend lots of time, money, and attention on their appearance. They don’t realize that when a man truly loves a woman the way God intends, it is not based on external qualities. He embraces and accepts her for who she is, simply because he adores her.
Katelyn is now a single mother who is much more mature and happy with herself. She still has that large scar under her left eye from being hit by her ex-husband. But she calls it her “testimony” and now tells other women, “You can’t make a man love you based on your outward qualities, if his inward qualities are all messed up.”
Those words are so true.
For years, men cheated on me to the point where I thought there must be something wrong with me. I felt like I wasn't beautiful enough, good enough, or worthy enough to be treated with respect. But as I drew closer to the Lord, He helped me see myself the right way, as beautiful, loved, and worthy to be treated with dignity.
Once God renewed my mind, everything changed.
So if you find yourself feeling "less than," let God renew your mind and show you your value so you won’t let a man come along and devalue you.
Let your loving Heavenly Father reveal to you the truth, so you won't buy into the "beauty myth" that says what you look like on the outside should determine how a man treats you.
*The name of my friend was changed in this article to protect her identity
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