Why?
Live beautifully. Make your life a masterpiece.
Will someone please tell me what that’s meant to look like?

Anyone heard of the Belbin? It’ s a test identifying which of 8 behavioural roles you best match. Cornhill College in London offers its students the assessment, as well as feedback afterwards. After taking the test I knocked, somewhat trepidatiously, on the analyst’s door, wondering which category would claim me. Thank heavens Psycho Chick wasn’t one of the eight. As I entered, he stood up, shook my hand and said, “Good to meet you Fiona. You’re a 12.2 out of 10 Completer Finisher. In all my years analyzing results, I’ve never met a 12. 2 out of 10 Completer -Finisher.” (Knew it. Psycho Chick)
The Point? (Chill Derriere, us Completer -Finishers always have a point)
Is this. I need to know when I’ve arrived. Lived beautifully? TICK. Masterpiece achieved? TICK.

So that’s why the (non-psycho) Completer-Finisher in me has found this hard.

Do I Belbin my way to beauty – go for what I’m good at? But I don’t like everything I’m good at. There’s beauty there, yes. But it’s more than that.

Do l, listen hard for the Delhi in my Belly? Is my passion my purpose? For sure, in part. Say my passion is making my home beautiful, or learning to play the didgeridoo? (It’s not, I have a life) Do I get to choose what beauty is? My passion puts a face on my purpose, but is that the essence of it?

I think of people who I admire who are achieving their goals, often overcoming great odds. There’s beauty in the becoming and the overcoming. Is growth the essence of it? Yes, but growth towards what?

Anyone heard of the Marquart’s mask?
It’s kind of mind blowing. When studying nature, the Greeks discovered a recurring mathematical ratio, common in all things beautiful. It’s called the Golden Ratio and it’s found in DNA, shells, galaxies – even in the length of your hand compared with that of your lower arm, or your total height’s relationship to the distance between your head and your fingertips. No jokes, it’s everywhere.
The math, for those of you interested, is this: take a line, divide it into 2 parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part. The golden ratio is 1.618:1, and the 1.618 is called “Phi”.

So, beauty scientists wondered, what if the Golden Ratio, can be applied to facial beauty as well? Turns out it can. Now dubbed The Divine Proportion, it is the universal standard for facial beauty, irrespective of age, race or gender. Enter Marquart’s Mask – devised by plastic surgeon Stephen Marquart’s as a template for facial beauty based on this exact same mathematical relationship. Angelina Jolie fits the mask perfectly. Egyptian queen Nefertiti, considered one of the most beautiful women of all time, also passes the Marquart mask test with flying colours.

My point? If you’re aiming for facial beauty, the guesswork’s been removed. There’s even a printable version for keen beans. (No Shazza, I’m not that shallow. I haven’t printed out a copy. Yet. lol)

Okay, last one. Anyone heard of Jon Butcher?
Millionaire entrepreneur, he’s developed Lifebook, the programme hailed to help you “Turn your life into a living Masterpiece”. It’s power? The premise that clarity breeds mastery. An intentional blue print is created for 12 key areas of your life.
So that’s why I’ve been proper stuck – I’m proper fuzzy on beauty. Yes, it will have many faces (I’m not judging, but if one of yours is the didgeridoo, seek help) – but is there one thing that beats at the heart of every beautiful life? Is there an essence to beauty?

So, I put my GO AWAY sign on the door, shut out the kids, the dogs, the phone, the husband…. scrunch my eyes up tight and think hard hard hard…
I think of the One most beautiful, His essence.
I think of all those most beautiful to me – who I’ve read about or had the honour of knowing.
And I find it.
Other.

Nooooooo. The let-down. Not other. Anything but other. Because as women, we give up so much of ourselves, put huge parts of ourselves on hold, and it doesn’t always feel beautiful. Or look it. I’m tired of other-ing. This journey is about MY becoming. It can’t be other. That sucks.
Earplugs back in. Scrunch eyes up tight. But can’t change the truth of it. It really is the image we bear. Our DNA. Our PHI. Our Divine proportion. Other.

How do I know? Philosopher Henry David Thoreau says it is vain to sit down to write if you have not stood up to live. So, I can only share with you what I have lived and it’s this: I found beauty when I gave up my right to myself.
My journey started many years ago, when I visited Russia and the Ukraine.
Russia has been called, an orphan -making factory, with approximately 3000 000 street children and 1000 000 children housed in orphanages. Those classified as “normal”, graduate out of the orphanage at 17 with virtually no skills for life. 50% end up in prostitution or crime, 30% addicted to drugs or alcohol, and 10% commit suicide. Only 1 in 10 re-integrate into society. Mothers of special needs children are urged to place them in state care. More than 2/3 of these children are wrongly diagnosed and are essentially given the label of “imbecile”. These children are in “closed homes” – meaning they never venture outside and very few outsiders are admitted access to the home. Few speak. Many are confined to bed for life. At 17 these children go to an adult mental asylum for life where conditions are unthinkable. They are truly “the forgotten”.

The burden I started to feel for these children was almost unbearable. And besides the burden, I felt challenged. A Ukrainian pastor shared with me how his 3-year-old adopted son who he’d found on the streets copied everything he did. If he ate a certain way, his son ate the same way. If he spat, his son spat. He’d changed his son’s destiny when he adopted him, and his son imitated him in everything. The pastor’s true north? The Father he was imitating, “For He so loved us, He gave His only son”.

So, I had the burden. And I had the blue print.
But I didn’t have the passion.
That didn’t seem right.
But maybe that’s ok . Maybe it’s enough to know what I should do and do it. Maybe that’s still beauty.
But I wasn’t buying.
He didn’t want me to adopt. He wanted to give me His heart.

Romans 8 says that the proof of the Spirit’s work in us and through us, is the Abba cry. “You’ve received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba. Father!” The Spirit points us to Jesus, identifies us with Him and we cry out, with him, to the Father. It’s the cry of surrender,it’s the roar of a warrior. It’s all things other.

My heart was still trying to play catch up, when we hit a huge roadblock and it seemed the adoption would be completely derailed. At the time I was away by myself, staying at a friend’s beach cottage. I recall so clearly standing in the lounge looking out over the ocean as the realization hit me that these children might not become mine. And a new emotion began to surface – that of a mother whose child has been taken from her. A silent roar against the thought of them being lost to new life. Being lost to me. In that moment I realized an exchange had taken place – my heart for His. He’d taken me to a place where I could pray my desires back to Him. Desire was finishing what obedience had started. He’d given me the Abba cry.

As women we often get told one of 2 things. Give up who you are for others, or, don’t trust your desires. I don’t think either are true. I’ll try explain, and end, with a story.
I met Eric Nelson many years ago at a Viva Conference for Children at Risk. In-between seminars one day, Eric shared him and his wife Holly’s, phenomenal story.
They had travelled to Bolivia to adopt 2 girls with Down Syndrome. The government officials were very suspicious of them, interrogating them separately. They were convinced they wanted the children solely for body parts. Puzzled, the judged asked them, “Why do you want these children” Eric replied, “We want to give our lives, so they may have life.” A year later Eric received a call in the States from the very same judge saying, “I’ve found another one for you to save.”

Giving up the right to my life as I wanted it to look, saved not only my son and my daughter, it saved me. Because the PHI, the essence of Who I am made to, not only copy, but become – is other. Becoming my best me is when I fit the dimensions of God’s heart.

And we are meant to become that. Really.

And when I was sad over the birth children I would never have, God said 2 words to me: “I know”. And this is what I believe it meant. “I , the Son, know your pain, for I gave myself up for you. I, the Father, know your pain, for I gave up my Son for you.” If what He’d asked me to give up wasn’t so precious I’d never understand His loss so intimately. The gift I thought I was giving Him, was His to me. He showed me His very heart. And it was unspeakably beautiful.

And when I look at my life, there’s a lot that is not beautiful. Still. Alot. Not.
And it makes me sad.
But the story I’ve just told you makes me glad. Because it shows how , there on the floor in Felixstowe, He made my dimensions beautiful and changed me into lovely. The mask fitted. I became Other.

And when beauty is born, beauty gets to speak.
We do get what we want. When the mask fits.
That’s the secret.