You Are OK, But It Is Not OK: Two Things Every Woman Must Know
Editor’s Note: This incredible, incredible post was written by Billye Wynn. She is one-half of Wyatt & Wynn, the authors of the upcoming book, The Last Beholder. You can follow them at wyattandwynn.com or on Twitter at @wyattandwynn. And PS, you MUST follow them. They are full of surprises. – Lauren
When I was a little girl, there were two things a person could say about a female: you were either pretty or charming. Now that I’m grown, and now that I have grandchildren, I am made aware by the spectrum of beauty, intelligence, wit, and inner being that is constantly hovering over the heads of every waking woman at all times during the day.
We mentally assign numbers to creatures of hidden holiness as we interact with them. I do it every day. My daughter comes in and her hair is atrocious. I slide her “beauty” marker over to “needs improvement”. She says something complimentary about my wit and her “intelligence” marker moves to the “in perfect order” area.
This practice was, as most practices are, most likely taught to us by people in our lives that didn’t have the emotional capacity to properly see us. Someone we desperately loved couldn’t love us back the perfect way we held up in our hearts, and the measurement system popped up over our heads. 
If you had any sort of decent parenting at all, you certainly heard the words: “you are fine, just the way you are” at some point during your childhood. This came from a person who wanted to shield you from the measuring system, who wanted to implant goodness and truth and beauty in your brain before the Kardashians could worm their way in there.
Unfortunately, the Kardashians are very wormy.
Because, truth be told, even if someone has managed to set you straight, the world is constantly yelling at you that you’re wonderful, and what a great personality you have, but it’s whispering lies to you. And although lies about beauty and physical appearance are the foremost criminals, there are more subtle lies: lies about your heart, lies about your mind, and lies about your soul, which if not stopped, will create cracks in you that can only be absolved by death, cracks that you will carry with you and use to form a half-life for yourself, until you die, and Jesus holds your face in his hands and tells you the Truth.
And a beautiful thing about the Gospel of our Lord is that we are okay. Scripture upon scripture of being formed by his hands, of being known before birth, of being made in His image, of wearing the mark of the Holy Spirit upon us. And we, as believers, know that Jesus is perfecting us, daily, hourly, by the minute, but the hard part is stepping out of our homes and into the world, and steeling yourself against the agents of death that seem to skip ahead of us everywhere we go.
You are okay, but it’s not okay.
It doesn’t take a Tesla or a Twain or a Tennyson to tell us that the world is in pieces, shattered and shredded beyond man’s repair. There is poverty (which, in most cases, is not the noble of cinema or our minds, but soul-crushing and unbearable, causing mothers to make decisions that you or I could never dwell upon), there is jealousy, there is greed, there is resentment, there is a void of forgiveness, of courage to stand against these things. And it seems that even the people who do try and help are but drops of water in the ocean, and no one can ever seem to find the answer to the all the pain. Even the religious, who claim that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life can’t seem to offer more than platitudes and a feeble (yet hopeful) promise that all shall be well, one day, probably too far off to even see right now.
And that’s just the sickness inside the nations and civilizations, to speak nothing of our own hearts. Even the best of us harbor black thoughts that fester inside of us, hemming and hawing at our attempts of goodness. The world, and souls who have been tainted by the world, come at our inner selves with scrapers and chippers, ready to bruise, ready to steal, and hoping to devour so that they will not feel so bone-shatteringly alone.
This world and its inhabitants are not okay. You are okay, but it’s not okay.
These two truths vibrate in the universe as opposite magnetized forces. How can we be okay, and everything in the world, and in our own hearts, be so powerfully and painfully wrong? The answer is not easy. It comes in the form of one of those platitudes I spoke of earlier, which is in fact not a heavenly brush off, but the key to why we feel so tired, so sick, and so broken.
“I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:10-11)
Our hearts were not made for this realm. Our souls are constantly pressing against the constraints set upon it the moment Adam and Eve took the first bites and our feelings of malaise and malcontent haunt us, because we’re butterflies flopping about in a mason jar, when the true world is behind unbreakable glass and warped in our vision.
It’s possible (probable, really) that God is set above time, outside of it, so that He isn’t bothered with it. Which means that while we’re here on earth, we feel the tug of our true selves, set outside of time, already in communion with the Lord, the time when we are truly and finally okay. But since we live within time and the various spaces it occupies, we continue to fruitlessly throw our bodies against the glass, knowing that something else is there, but unable to truly see it, unable to take part.
So you are okay. You are okay because God has chosen you. Because Jesus Christ was so desperately in love with you, and eager to have you as a co-heir in the Kingdom of Heaven, and because the grace and glory of God is too much for anyone to bear, that he died for you, because while you’re okay, you’re not okay. But that’s okay. Because you’ve been redeemed, you’re a precious lamb that is worth more than angels, you have value, you have worth.
But the world is broken beyond repair other than by way of a miracle. And praise God, that miracle is coming. It will be here one day, and we will see His face, and His hands will wipe tears away, and the Truth will hold us tightly.
Reject the measurement system. It has no place hanging over any woman’s head who calls upon the name of the Lord. Know that you’re okay. But it’s not okay. But soon, it will be.
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WOW. Not only are we each judged by this measuring system, but we’ve become active members in it, holding other women to this system. How did this happen? Every woman is so beautiful in her own right, yet the world wants her generic: physically alluring, charming, etc. But generic isn’t beautiful, and this measuring system doesn’t hold water compared with God’s boundless love and acceptance. So very glad he’s the lover of my soul and not the world. Amen, Billie, amen.
February 10, 2012 at 7:00 am
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Oh my GOSH. What beautiful writing! What incredible insight! What TRUTH and ENCOURAGEMENT! I'm SO pumped up after reading this. WOW. So excited to read their book once it comes out. THANK YOU ladies! Thank you!
February 10, 2012 at 1:32 pm
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Wow. I could not have said it better. Simply beautiful!!!
February 12, 2012 at 8:27 pm
too preachy for me… it rejects measuring sticks and subtly implies it's own.
February 14, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Not at all preachy, just full of fire and truth and power. I am floored by this and so incredibly encouraged. They're the perfect words to something that's been stirring in my heart, that I just haven't had words for. Thank you for putting words to what Jesus is so clearly speaking to his girls. :-)
Stephanie
TheLipstickGospel.com
August 24, 2012 at 12:24 pm
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"people in our lives that didn’t have the emotional capacity to properly see us." – this rings a big bell for me. And I know that Jesus is the answer as you beautifully remind us. But I got to the end of the post and it felt like there was something still missing. It's great that eternity is going to be so wonderful, but was about NOW?
February 27, 2013 at 1:47 pm
Thank you for your wonderfully written powerful expression of the experience of our times. When we are deeply moved by our reality it is in that place new light breaks in like sunrise to awaken our soul. As sleep falls from our eyes let us call our spirit to attention. Let us be reminded that the miracle the world needs is IN YOU, each of you, and the world is waiting. longing, groaning, for you to release something new, a new sound that shifts the atmosphere. The sound of waking up, the sound of a new day rising, the sound of hope, the sound of making dust into beautiful things, the sound that resonates in all creation– The new sound is coming –from deep inside you– listen, you will hear it… then you will relight the fire, and the world will never be the same. ♥ John 14:12-13
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the picture for this passage…. why is it of the "ideal" pair of legs? seems counterintuitive. sort of dissapointing.
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