Seasons of Beauty

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; but a woman who fears the LORD will be greatly praised. Reward her for all she has done. Let her deeds publicly declare her praise.”  Proverbs 31:30-31

For twelve years Joanne Benda-Chew worked as a nurse in medical aesthetics—medical spas where women get botox and facelifts. She understood this passage better than most. “I went from working with those who were sick to those who were not sick, but only wanting to make themselves more beautiful. I quickly realized that they morphed into something very not beautiful.” The desire to fix their flaws and signs of aging became an obsession—an addiction. And after a while, Joanne was looking for something more meaningful—true beauty.

“I realized that the longer you stay in it, especially without the Lord, you become more and more like these women.  You become a slave to beauty. Beauty becomes your idol and the lumps and beatings you take to achieve it just become a part of the process to stay beautiful.” As Joanne began to look at the godly women in her personal life, she decided she wanted to have the kind of beauty that Solomon speaks about—she wanted to be a woman like her mother of 81 years, who was truly beautiful. She wanted to be “a woman who fears the Lord and is greatly praised” and not because of her outer beauty.

So with some encouragement from her husband, she embraced a new season in her life and applied to Kona Pregnancy Center as a nurse sonographer. “All the nurses I work with now all have that inner beauty. Many of them are older, retired—so they’re volunteering their time. They are beautiful because of their purpose.”

Life is a beautiful thing, and seeing that life over and over again in the womb is like seeing the heart of God. His imprint. His creation. As part of this life-affirming business, Joanne now admires his handiwork—”the intricate forming of a person in the womb” and she gets to see that first hand.

She sees how God has “…made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

She sees how God has made us “…so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” (Psalm 139)

This is what true beauty is!

In this season of Joanne’s life, she values aging and the wisdom it represents. She values the wrinkles around her eyes, because the inner beauty is there. She values the beauty of life and is fighting to preserve it.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” (Eccles. 3:1)

For now, Joanne is embracing the time to be born and is working diligently with women to preserve the beauty of their soul as well as the beauty in their womb.

Kim Griggs
Editor/Writer
Sparrow Solutions Group