Happy New Year one and all!

I join you from the warmth of a tired-Christmas-decoration-bedecked living room as Jon sits and plays some awful Wii football game invented for men that like that kind of thing.

I am fresh (although that is not QUITE the right word) from a few days away with some friends from Ivy Mcr church. A mini-break with 14 adults and 11 children is not restful in ANY way”¦ but it is superbly fun and wonderful. We laughed SO, SO hard. I almost threw up twice. And I nearly wet myself once. Those are good ratios people. The food and the company were rich indeed. I am content, a good half-stone heavier and a step nearer needing Tena lady. Happy days.

I know I don’t have the perfect model figure, unless you are talking about the Viking catalogue. I have always looked good behind a desk. But I am learning to celebrate the curves and the fleshy, wobbly bits of myself… perhaps a little more than I have before.

I haven’t got to the stage where they don’t matter to me at all but I am journeying towards that day of freedom. (Not nudity you understand. That is for Germans”¦ and the partially sighted.) But true freedom from worrying about that kind of rubbish.

I try to look nice and keep myself neat and tidy. But I am not obsessive about my mascara or lip gloss. I put makeup on once a day and if it is rude enough to fall off then then so be it. There is not enough time in my day to ‘RE-APPLY’. Reapplying is for girls and I am not a girl. I am a mature woman with precious little time and energy. So it must be used wisely.

Secondly, I don’t start the day eating a fist full of lard. (Except on holiday when lard, suet and all kinds of animal fats are a designated requisite.) I try and eat well, drink lots of water and get my rest. In short, I do look after myself – as best I know how anyway.

Let me tell you how I see it.
I am a woman. Fact.
I am getting older. Also”¦ fact.
My body grows unsightly, surprisingly strong hair overnight for no apparent purpose other than to test the strength of my poor tweezers. Sadly, fact.
Exercise of any duration and type hurts me. Fact.
Cake is my friend”¦ and yet also my enemy. Fact.

But I don’t actually think any of that is a massive priority for God. He wants me to be well and healthy, but He has other things on His heart for me too.

The last couple of days I have been thinking about this verse in
1 Peter 3:3-4.

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” (NIV)

We can often be obsessive about what we look like and not worry for a minute what we are like to live with, or how we come across to others. But God values the centre. He values what we are like on the inside. Have you ever wondered why?

A house can look amazing until you stay the night. Then you notice the cold drafts coming in at the windows, the loud neighbours, noisy road and leaking shower. It is when you live somewhere that you truly know these things about where you are staying.

You and I are God’s dwelling place. He LIVES in US. So what are we like to live in? What kind of house have you made for God? Are you an ideal home?

I know I am not!

The reason God cares more about what we are like inside is because He gets to see it close up. It is where He hangs out. Perhaps you and I need to focus in 2013 on doing some interior design? And perhaps a little decluttering? Let’s face it, there are many parts of our inner being that are far from pretty aren’t there?

Reapplying internal paintwork won’t work. God isn’t impressed with a lick of gloss-egg-shell-matt-white- sheen here and there. He wants real-deal-true-you purity.

So what is your New Year going to be about? The latest hair care products or the beauty of the ‘gentle and quiet spirit?’

I have SUCH a long way to go before anyone would call me an ideal home for God. But that is my 2013 aim. Join me as we play…