A Month without Make-Up.

It has been a month. One whole month! Can you believe it? Friday morning, I woke up, looked in the mirror, sighed because I looked like I had been punched in the face by my five-hour night, and then realized … it was the last day of my one-month-make-up-free challenge. Life had been moving fast, to be honest. Finals week has finally come and gone [and it was a week that wouldn’t have warranted much make up, to be honest]..

Here’s the thing. I want to have something to say today. I was hoping that today, as I met my goal and took a victory lap around my little room, that some profound truth would wiggle its way to the surface of my heart and form itself into a sentence for all to hear.

But I don’t. Honestly? I don’t have anything new to say today. I’ve been a month without makeup and this morning I looked in the mirror and couldn’t wait to put it on. It was one of the first things on my mind when I woke and I realized I haven’t come as far as I would have liked. I painted up my face and walked out the door without so much as a thought to the original intentions of the process.

About halfway through the day I caught my reflection in a mirror. And I didn’t recognize myself. Ha, I thought, I’ve said that before. I have. It was at the beginning of the this make-up-less-ness. I would see my face and think, Wow. Seriously. Someone please tell me that is not my face. While looking in the mirror I paused to remember that. And my eyes got just a tad wet. It makes me sad, the ugly in my heart. It makes me sad that so many days of a painted face and I no longer knew what was underneath. What makes me more sad is that after a month of getting reacquainted with my face and growing more comfortable in my own skin that I couldn’t wait to cover it up again; so much so that I didn’t even recognize myself.

I guess there are a couple of things I can say. I’ve learned some little things, and I’ll share them with you if you promise not to laugh.

I have a gazillion freckles. They are everywhere! I’m like a Dalmatian puppy, for crying out loud!

I have really soft eye lashes – nothing beats being able to rub your eyes because you’re not wearing make-up.

When I laugh, I generally cry. I try not to laugh too hard when I have on mascara because it will run. But this last month has held a lot of laughing tears.

When I’m not wearing lip color, I chew my lower lip when I’m thinking and I smack my lips before I speak.

How funny is that? I never noticed these things…But I think I like them.

You know, I’ve been noticing make-up a lot more. I notice how girls have lined their eyes and lips and tinted their cheeks. [I probably noticed because I was insecure about my naked face] And here’s what I’m going to take away from all of this: there’s a face under that. For every girl with a painted face, there’s a face underneath it all. For every made-up woman and every covered blemish, there’s a girl beneath it all with uglies of her own. We each carry a world of woundedness and we do our best to fake it through the day. But sometimes, we just need to be able to take it all off and be accepted and loved and celebrated for what’s underneath – uglies and all. So I’m wondering what that could look like. I’m wondering what it could mean to remember and to act on the knowledge that there is more that what meets the eye. I don’t really know, to be honest. But I think it starts right here. Right inside this heart of mine. It starts with remembering that this one-month challenge is a lifestyle choice, by remembering that even when I wear make-up that I am not allowed to wear a mask. By remembering that there is not alternative to honesty and vulnerability. By remembering that we, as Jesus people, don’t count value in the same way others do. By choosing to let the uglies surface. And by remembering, when that flawless face walks past, that there’s a face underneath that, too.