With each passing decade of motherhood, we gradually exchange perishable beauty for the imperishable kind. It starts when we are young, our bellies expanding to grow and nourish children. Stretch marks and loose skin arrive, perhaps to stay, sometimes accompanied by scars. Then as we spend long days and sleepless nights cherishing our children, discipling them, and laboring for them in prayer, lines both fine and deep etch themselves into our faces, evidence of our smiles, laughter, and furrowed concern. One by one, gray hairs pop in—until one day our glory-crowned heads (Prov. 16:31) are gazing down not at our own children but our grandchildren cradled in our wrinkled hands. And what could be more beautiful than that?

Beauty is a common theme in the Bible, and feminine beauty—even the aesthetic kind—is certainly something to cultivate and celebrate as a gift from God and a reflection of his splendor. The world would be a dull place without it. But it will not endure forever. Proverbs 31:30 reminds us that “beauty is vain,” or fleeting. We can chase it all we want, but eventually it’s going to elude us.

It’s natural to mourn and want to defy this reality, and stewardship of our physical bodies is imperative—not just to help us age gracefully but to enable us to serve the Lord and people as well as possible for as long as possible. But even as we agonize over the options for eye cream and hair dye, let us do something better: embrace the opportunities that motherhood offers to gain the kind of beauty that has no expiration date.

Peter exhorts women, “[L]et your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:4 ESV).

What kind of feminine beauty endures? The kind that’s cultivated through long years of spiritual endurance: habits that nurture spiritual growth, hands that nurture the young and the old, mouths that worship God and encourage others, hearts that trust him in times of trouble. There’s a reason that children usually want Mom, not Dad, when they’re sick or hurt. God designed women with a measure of tenderness and gentleness that men don’t typically have—an extra sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others. The “gentle and quiet spirit” that God defines as beauty is deeply needed in our homes, churches, and communities.

Let us . . . embrace the opportunities that motherhood offers
to gain the kind of beauty that has no expiration date.

But let’s not make the mistake of thinking the Bible portrays the ideal woman as passive. Quite the opposite. Far from instructing us to sit back silently and complacently in the face of challenges, Peter goes on to say, “do not fear anything that is frightening” (v. 6b).

When we vow to love and cherish a man “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”—and later, when a helpless child is placed into our waiting arms for the first time—we make ourselves vulnerable to all sorts of things that are “frightening”: health scares, wayward children, financial struggles, conflict, infertility, and grief, just to name a few. But what Peter tells us is that imperishable beauty has an important component: tranquil courage in the face of challenges.

The idea of feminine courage is brought to life in Proverbs 31: “An excellent [virtuous] wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (v. 10). The Hebrew word translated “excellent” is chayil, implying strength and valor. Chayil in the Bible nearly always relates to strength: armies, valiant warriors, and even God himself. It is also the word Boaz uses to describe Ruth’s reputation as “a woman of noble character” (Ruth 3:11 CSB).

“God made you, as a woman, to rule in this world,
to subdue it, to act according to his image.”
– Gary Thomas

Developing this type of active, virtuous strength is one way we as women can reflect God’s image in our spheres of influence both inside and outside the home. In Genesis 1, we see God as an active, working God—and we see both man and woman made in his image to do the same.

In Loving Him Well, Gary Thomas writes, “God made you, as a woman, to rule in this world, to subdue it, to act according to his image. Sin often drags us back toward sluggishness, despair, and despondency—giving in to life as it is rather than remaking life as it could be with God’s redeeming power unleashed. . . . The current challenges in your [family] may well be God’s vehicle for you to become the strong woman he created you to be.”

You are “chayil”—a virtuous, excellent woman of valor—when you run the household skillfully (and cheerfully!) while your husband tackles the challenges of work and ministry.

You are chayil when you apply yourself diligently to developing an intimacy with God and a theological depth that enable you to teach and disciple others.

You are chayil when you care well for your children and confront the issues in your marriage and family rather than giving up hope of anything ever changing.

You are chayil when you work to provide income for your family or serve in ministry alongside your husband when the need arises.

You are chayil when you strategize to train your children effectively so they can be a delight (Prov. 29:17), rather than resenting your husband’s outside commitments that leave you short on help.

You are chayil when you cling to God in the face of infertility or miscarriage.

You are chayil when you embrace children as “a heritage from the Lord” (Ps. 127:3), whether you’re providing foster care for a child in need or choosing to be thankful for an unplanned, inconvenient pregnancy.

You are chayil when you trust the Lord in the face of terrifying health challenges and heart-wrenching loss.

“Womanhood is a call,” Elisabeth Elliot wrote in Let Me Be a Woman, a book she wrote as a wedding present to her daughter, Valerie. “It is a vocation to which we respond under God, glad if it means the literal bearing of children, thankful as well for all that it means in a much wider sense, that in which every woman, married or single, fruitful or barren, may participate—the unconditional response exemplified for all time in Mary the virgin, and the willingness to enter into suffering, to receive, to carry, to give life, to nurture and care for others. The strength to answer this call is given us as we look up toward the Love that created us, remembering that it was that Love that first, most literally, imagined sexuality, that made us at the very beginning real men and real women. As we conform to that Love’s demands we shall become more humble, more dependent—on Him and on one another—and even (dare I say it?) more splendid.”

A woman’s work is not for the faint of heart, but take courage: the Lord is with you and has given you “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). “Fear not,” he says, “for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isa. 41:10).

Photo by Bethany Beck on Unsplash