I wish you could meet her.
Really spend time with her and look into her eyes. See the snow white of her skin and the cascade in her brunette hair.
It’s not just on the surface. It’s something deeper. The sparkle in her eyes. The purity under the surface of her skin. The gentleness that bursts from within holds her gentle waves as a mere complement.
Paula Hendricks is a true beauty.
That made it a little hard for me to read the raw confessions of self-loathing in these pages. Made it hard for me to understand how her eyes could not see her beauty. And thought the presence of a guy would be the evidence of it.
But that is the beauty of this book.
Paula is transparent about her struggle to find contentment in God’s plan for love.
Which of us has not struggled to see our beauty?
To accept God’s plan for romance?
Believing that we need a guy to complete us is one of the most prevalent lies young women tend to believe. When I had the honor of working with Nancy Leigh DeMoss to write Lies Young Women Believe, we conducted focus groups across the nation. We asked teen girls if they believed the statement, “I would feel better about my life if I had a boyfriend.” Sixty-eight percent strongly agreed.
Think about that.
Your life would be better with a guy?
You’re that needy?
Paula hits the nail on the head when she writes: “Boy craziness is really just girl neediness.”
What do you need?
I’m not going to tell you here, because the pages of this book do it so very well. Like a great novelist, Paula will take you through the ups and downs of her love life until you find the thrilling (but not so conclusive) conclusion. Yep, this one’s gonna be a cliff-hanger but that cliff is the place where you jump off into freedom.
And, oh, how I want to see you get free from the counterfeits we stuff in to our needy hearts as girls. Boys. Beauty. These are two of the most difficult to navigate topics for the female heart, and yet they are so important. We cannot deny ourselves the struggle.
You see, marriage as God designed it is a picture of our romance with Him. You would never consider painting a picture of something without first looking at the Original, right? But that is what we do when we try to stuff beauty and boys into our neediness without first looking into the eyes of Jesus for what we need.
In the pages of this book, Paula will use her story and the Word of God to transform your mind. You’ll turn from being a “beauty grasper” into a “beauty gazer” and from a boy-crazy needy girl into a God-satisfied woman of freedom.
Praying over this book and your heart today as I write this.
Dannah Gresh
Best-selling author, And the Bride Wore White & Get Lost: Your Guide To Finding True Love
January 30, 2014