Woo-hoo!

Congratulations to me!  This is my one-hundredth (published) blog post!  I have been celebrating all day by refusing to get out of my pajamas and being forced to cancel a coffee date with a friend because my headache refused to respond appropriately to ibuprofen.

Uh, yay.

In honor of my "anniversary" (or, rather, coincidentally, I guess, since I only put this together today because my plans fell through), I've launched a brand-new blog.  It's something that I've mentioned before, but that I put off because I wasn't sure where to begin, or how to maintain it.  But here goes nothing!  It's called "Blueprint for Beauty" and it's geared mainly towards teen and tween girls.  It's Biblically-based, with lots of personal stories, fashion tips, life lessons and biographies of amazing women who possessed inner beauty and/or outer beauty that led them to do great things.  I'm really excited about it and, ultimately, I'm doing it in honor of Olivia, the daughter I never had, whom I would have wanted to raise with this kind of advice.

It's not my goal to be condemning or preachy, but the whole slant of the blog is that we are created in God's image and, because God is beautiful, so are we.  I am exploring the attributes of God that make him beautiful, like patience, mercy, honesty, power, faithfulness, and grace - and sharing stories about historical woman who possessed those characteristics.  I just wrote a blog about Corrie ten Boom and her huge capacity for forgiveness.  I'd like to talk about Deborah's wisdom in leading the Israelite people...maybe German nun Hrosvita who single-handedly revived theatre as an art form?  There are so many amazing women whose stories I want to share with the next generation.

The whole idea is to help young women accept the fact that they are beautiful and that what they see in the mirror or on the scale does not define them.  It's a really hard lesson to teach and an even harder one to learn, but the sooner the better.  I'm so tired of living in - and sometimes believing! - a society trying to convince us that clear skin and slim thighs are proof of value and beauty.

That kind of thinking is NOT godly.  It needs to stop.

Join me here.