From Deformed to Transformed: An Honest Look at Beauty, with Robin Parton

Do you long to be beautiful on the inside and the outside? If you’ve ever wondered what God’s Word says about physical beauty, don’t miss this episode of Grounded with guest Robin Parton. After surgery to remove a brain tumor changed Robin’s face dramatically, she turned to the mirror of Scripture to understand the truth about appearance. Her interview will point you to God’s Word and help you discover a biblical perspective on both inner and outer beauty.

Episode Notes

• The Mirror of God’s Word book by Robin Parton
• “8 Conversations about True Beauty & Dignity” podcast series: https://www.reviveourhearts.com/podcast/true-girl/season/8-conversations-about-true-beauty-dignity
• Connect with Robin via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reflectionsfromonhigh or email: themirrorofgodsword@gmail.com

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Portia Collins: You’re beautiful just the way you are. It’s inner beauty that matters most. What if the truth is something entirely else? Something entirely different?

I’m Portia Collins, and this is Grounded.

Erin Davis: And I’m Erin Davis. We’re here week after week, every Monday, to hand out two things that you need every week . . . and we need every week too. That’s hope and perspective. I hope you’re ready for some hope and perspective about beauty.

I’m going to say something that Christian women might feel a little bit funny about, I want to be beautiful. Of course, I want a beautiful heart, but I also want to be beautiful on the outside. That’s why I took the time this morning to fix my hair, why I’m not showing up to Grounded in my pajamas, although I do occasionally show up in my slippers. That’s why I put on make-up and that’s probably why you’ve done some of those things already this morning too.

Is that okay? Does that make me vain, that I want to be a beautiful woman?

Portia: I hope not, because I want to be beautiful too.

But beauty can be honestly an ugly subject. Our guest today knows a thing or two about that. After surgery to remove a brain tumor, this changed Robin’s face dramatically. She turned to the mirror of God’s Word to find answers. Specifically, her answers to questions about beauty.

Erin: I love that thought of God’s Word being a mirror. It really is. It helps us see ourselves as we really are, and helps see God as He really is.

So, I’ll make you a promise: this is going to be an interesting conversation, an encouraging conversation, but it’s also going to be more than skin deep. So, we’re glad you’re here for it with us this morning.

Portia: Yeah, I’m excited about it. Listen like I tell Emmy: put your listening ears on guys.

Erin: Come on.

Portia: Because I really think this is going to bless you.

Also, wait, before we go any further, I need y’all to share this episode. Okay? I know that there are some other ladies in your life who you probably think would benefit from hearing this conversation as well. So, hit that “share” button, send a text. In the meantime, you know I love to bring the good news, but I love it even more when Erin Davis gets to bring the good news.

Erin: It’s like we draw straws for good news every week. I don’t know if it’s the short straw or the long straw that gets me to be the good news correspondent, but I get to bring to you, and I am glad I do.

God’s always at work. We want to take just a moment here on Grounded, and celebrate that God is good, and He is doing good in His world. And this morning I want to turn your attention to the nation of Eritrea. I don't even know if I'm saying that right? To be honest, if you're geographically challenged like myself, Eritrea is a small country on the horn of Africa. It's bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti. So, that maybe gives you an idea of the region that we're talking about.

And as I often say, the good news follows the bad news. Eritrea is a nation where persecution against our brothers, Christian brothers and sisters is extreme. I mean, really extreme.

And late last month Voice of the Martyrs, which is a ministry committed to advocating for those who have suffered persecution for the cause of Christ. They asked God's people to pray specifically for two pastors who have been wrongfully imprisoned, I would say, in that nation for more than twenty years—think about that! These are our brothers, followers of Jesus, leaders in His Church. And because this nation is a nation that goes after believers, they've been in prison for their faith for more than twenty years.

Voice of the Martyrs sends out the call to pray for these two pastors. And what happened is that 17,000 Christians from 113 countries around the globe, committed to pray. That is good news in itself. But the two pastors that were initially the spark for this wildfire of prayer, I got to say that this morning, as we are doing this episode live, they remain behind bars.

But soon after that prayer initiative began 13 other Christians, again, these are our brothers, our sisters in Jesus, they had been in prison and behind bars for ten years, they were all released. Prayer works.

And just like He did in the book of Acts, God continues to set prisoners free. We think that's really good news. I would just encourage you now that that nation is on your radar screen, now that you know that those two pastors are in prison there, now that you know that there are other believers behind bars in that country, now that you know that when God's people pray jail doors fling wide open. I would just encourage you to pray for this nation and our brothers and sisters who are there. God is at work. And that is always good news.

Portia, I'll turn it over to you.

Portia: I love it. I love it. I love it. You are right. When God is at work, He can just pop those doors right on open.

Erin: Amen.

Portia: Just like we’ve seen in the Bible: Paul. Silas, Peter. So yeah, I’ll keep praying.

Erin: Roll those stones away.

Portia: That's it.

Well, guys, I am excited to have Robin Parton with us today. Robin went in for surgery for a benign brain tumor. and she woke up looking completely different. She says that from the very first look in the mirror post-surgery, she knew that she would need God's help and grace to understand the truth about physical beauty. And so, I am elated to welcome to Grounded, Robin.

Robin Parton: It's good to be here. It's really been fun to meet you both.

Portia: Well, we're glad to have you.

Robin: Thank you.

Portia: I want to start by going back. Take us back to the moment when you looked in the mirror for the first time and saw that the surgery resulted in some deformity to your facial features. What was it like?

Robin: Going into surgery, there was a 30% chance I would lose all of hearing in my right ear, which I did lose it all, even though this procedure was 70% that I wouldn't. There was a less than 5% chance that I'd have any facial deformity.

And so, you're in ICU first. Then my daughter came out and stayed with me at the hospital. She just happened to be the one who was there when they let me up to actually go into the bathroom. I knew that I had facial paralysis because everything's running out of my mouth.

Now, the initial facial paralysis was I had no control over the right side of my face. And then over time, just like a stroke victim, when your brain can't talk to your muscles, a stroke victim often clenched up like this, all these muscles have balled up here. And the upper third part of my face is still paralyzed. But at the start, it literally just hung down to where people who knew me but didn't know what happened would gasp and say, did you have a stroke? That was what it looked like.

So of course, there's bruising and stuff. But Cindy had her arm around me and walked me into the bathroom. And when I looked into the mirror, I said, “I was prepared to lose my hearing. I was prepared to have the balance issues. But I was not prepared to look like this.” And I literally said, I’m so ashamed of it. But I literally said, “I feel like I'm a freak.”

And as soon as I said it, the Holy Spirit convicted my heart. I knew that my thinking was all wrong. I remember just standing there and thinking, I have got to get into the mirror of God's Word and spend as little time as possible in front of a physical mirror, because I need to get God's mind on this topic.

So, from there I had damage to my eye because of my eye was paralyzed open. It took a little while until I could really read. But as soon as I could read, what I did was I just looked up every word in the Bible that was: beauty, beautiful, fair, countenance. I had to do with a person. I put it in a document. Then I went back and got out my Vines, and I defined those Greek and Hebrew words. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they didn't always mean what we thought they meant.

I began to put together a Bible study. Well, as I'm putting together this Bible study, I'm sharing what I learned, and different people were saying, “You should write a book.” That didn't really appeal to me. But a friend suggested that I write a Bible study, and that did appeal to the teacher in me.

I firmly believe that we only get out of something what we put into it. I'm discovering, discovering, discovering, and my faith is increasing, and I'm drawing closer to the Lord. And that would be the purpose, not I feel sorry for me.

I realized that the training I received from biblical counseling also played a part. Because one of the first things we learned is that all of us will behave according to what we believe and what we desire.

Well, 2 Peter 1:2 says, “Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” Probably ten-plus years prior to my surgery, I was introduced to a little method of study of going through the Psalms and looking for God.

And so, I just would read. I didn't have any study books. I would just circle God is my . . . The Lord is my shepherd. God is my defense. Then I would write it on an index card and meditate on that.

So, I had already been studying God. You know, we're all different. Some people love history, so we look at the Bible as a history book. I am a rule keeper.

Portia: Me too.

Robin: So, I can to look at the Bible to keep all these rules. But the Bible is an autobiography. I know that one of the things when I learned about Revive Our Hearts, one of the things I love is the emphasis on really knowing God and studying God. That was a different tweaking of reading the Bible in that aspect, looking for the character of God.

But had I not been doing that those ten years prior to surgery, there is no doubt in my mind, I would have just thought God was punishing me. But because I knew He wasn't punishing me, then I knew I needed to run to His Word and see what He had to say about beauty.

So, in my book, the first week, we just talked about the history of mirrors in the Bible. The law is compared to a mirror. And so, there's no greater support system than God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. So, the very first week, we take the time to make sure the readers are introduced to our relationship with our heavenly Father through faith in Jesus Christ by being saved. That's kind of a foundational chapter.

But I've said that probably the most important we know as believers is that salvation is most important. But it is the second chapter where we really begin to look at what does the Bible mean when it talks about believing and trusting and having faith? And then, seeing, knowing that we can trust God with what He allows into our lives.

Portia: Yeah.

Robin: The third chapter is my absolute favorite. Because as I said, we're going to behave according to what we believe and what we desire. You guys both have kids, and you know, it’s so easy to deal with their behavior. But we need to find out what's behind that behavior. What are they believing? What are we desiring that's driving that behavior, so that we are biblically showing them correct belief and correct desires.

Well, God tells us in, I'm just going to look down here to make sure. Oh, I forgot to share this with you. Before I even started the study, and because of reading, I came across this verse, and it was like seeing it again for the first time. Psalm 17:15, where the Psalmist said, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with his likeness.” And it was like, “Woah God.” You know, so often we desire to have somebody else's hair, somebody else's figure. We desire things that are temporal, they're not eternal.

And yet, the Bible tells us . . . We're so quick to quote Romans 8:28. I wrote it down so I don't forget, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God to them that are called according to His purpose.”

But the very next verse says, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” And so, we need to desire to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

So, in week three, we go through the basics, the basics, like, do I desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit as Jesus was? Do I desire to know the Word? He is the Word. To know the Word, to fight Satan with the Word. Do I desire to commune with God the Father? Do I desire to love as Jesus loves? Do I desire to go around doing good as Jesus did, and then to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ?

Portia: You go ahead and take a sip. I don't want to jump in here, because I love your passion, I absolutely love and I can see that you are a woman who is just rich with God's Word. First of all, I'm learning a lot just sitting here talking to you right now.

But I do want to go back a little bit. Our Grounded audience is primarily Christian women. And the conversation when it comes to beauty, this conversation can be a bit interesting sometimes. It often shifts to the importance of inner beauty, which we're not saying that's a bad thing. But I do want to know, especially from a biblical perspective, why do you think that we typically shift the conversation to the importance of inner beauty? Is it that because physical beauty doesn't matter to God? Does physical beauty matter to God? Do we see a biblical case for that?

Robin: Yes, definitely. As I go through my study, I've tried to build one principle upon another. So, that's why I was saying that when our desires are for those attributes that are allowing Christ to conform His image in us, it then helps us to have the right mindset about physical beauty.

So, if you think of Jesus Himself, the Bible says He did not have . . . (I can't even think of the verse right now.) But He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, and He did not have a physical appearance that anybody would desire.

As you get further into the study, we begin to look at various women in the Bible who God did say were beautiful.

And the neat thing is, as you see it, you can see how God used their beauty, just as He uses any other talent, ability, or attribute that He's given us.

So, beauty is another aspect of our physical bodies, our physical being, that can be used to bring honor and glory to God. However, it is not necessary. Then we looked at eight different women in the Bible. And the assignment is to see how the Bible describes her.

And the second question is, what does he say about her physical appearance? Absolutely nothing. So, in society, we have made beauty and talent things so prevalent that we desire them, and we go toward them, and we spend a lot of money to improve those things.

We're the temple of the Holy Spirit, so we ought to pay attention to our bodies, and we ought to make ourselves look as nice as possible for the glory of God.

Portia: Absolutely.

Robin: But that's the underlying issue. I'm not sure I answered your question to the degree you may have wanted.

Portia: 100%. I think that you did answer the question. I mean, right off the bat.

Now, I want to ask you this. We kind of talked a little bit about this before we started our episode this morning. But kind of digging in a little bit more into God's idea of beauty, and specifically, how that ties to creation. Help us to better understand God's mind and God's intention behind beauty.

Robin: Yes, so I want to say it's about countenance. It is the reflection on our faces that are coming from our emotions and our inner thinking. And so that is where our countenance can radiate Christ. You can see somebody who doesn't necessarily have what we would call beautiful facial features. And yet, they just had this countenance about them that is coming from the inside out.

When we talk about inner beauty, the word countenance is the right word to use there. So, after I wrote the book . . . (and there's so much more to say, we don't have time to get into all that).

But I was on a hike. As I was hiking, I literally was captivated by this reflection that I saw. I'm looking at this reflection, and it's so beautiful. And then I realized, it's a mud puddle. And ever since then, I'll go by a body of water, and my eye is immediately drawn to the reflection. And I think, Wow God. I don't stand there at the body of water and say, “Is that body of water shaped like an hourglass? Is it shaped like a pair? Is it a large body of water? Is it a little body of water? Is it a clean body of water? Is it a muddy body of water?” No, I am so captivated by the reflection in the body of water.

I think that is such a beautiful picture of what God desires to do in our lives. That is our countenance. That is our inner beauty. Are we reflecting Jesus Christ?

But in order to reflect Jesus Christ, we have to be still before Him. You don't see a reflection in a turbulent body of water. You see it in a very still body. The reflection is sharpest when the water is still. And we need to be still before the Lord and allow Him, as He says in the Psalms . . . This morning, I listened to this where He says that as we delight in the Lord, He gives us the desires of our heart so that we would desire Him and His attributes and the eternal things that matter more than we desire these temporal qualities about our physical appearance.

Portia: Amen. I think that's the exclamation point on a good conversation. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Robin. We're gonna drop a link to your website and this study that you've been talking about and mentioning, all throughout this conversation. You ladies can check it out and find it on Robin’s website. I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for your heart for God's Word, and your heart to teach us what God really says about beauty and how it helps to shape our perspectives of beauty. So, thank you, Robin.

Robin: Thank you, Portia. It's been great to be with you guys.

Portia: Well, I always want to say it's time to get grounded in God's Word. But y'all already know we have been grounded from the very start of this episode. We've already been grounded in God's Word. But we're gonna get in there even more, and Erin Davis is here to help us do it. So, Erin, where are we going? Where are we going in our Bibles? Let me grab mine.

Erin: From one mud puddle to another Portia. We're going to be in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 11.

It makes sense that we would head to the wisdom book as we're trying to understand. What does God's Word really say about beauty? As you know, I'm sure Proverbs is an ancient book of Wisdom, but it's gonna give us an injection of truth better than Botox. This morning, I want you to consider Solomon's words recorded in Proverbs 11:22, just a single verse this morning,

Like a gold ring in a pig's snout
is a beautiful woman without discretion.

As I was thinking about this episode this morning, honestly, while I was putting on my makeup and fixing my hair, I thought, the world doesn't get it wrong in saying that beauty matters. As Robin pointed out, we can look around at the world God is made and realize beauty matters. It matters to God. Where the world can get it wrong, where our desires, as Robin was pointing out, our heart can get it wrong is in sync saying that beauty is ultimate.

So, I want you to think about this image here in Proverbs: a ring made of the finest gold, the kind that just shines. And it certainly is beautiful. But stick that gold ring inside the nose of a pig and beauty is wasted.

I live on a farm. I have raised several pigs. And what I can tell you is that they use their noses to dig in the dirt. If we decided to pierce the nose of one of those animals, it wouldn't be long before that beautiful shiny gold would be completely covered up with muck.

And that's the image that Scripture gives us of a beautiful woman. It doesn't say she's bad for being beautiful, but a beautiful woman who lacks wise judgment.

You do have beauty to offer. As Robin was talking, even though I could tell what she described had happened to her face, she still has so much beauty to offer. And you have beauty to offer, not because of anything you necessarily do or don't do. But because God made you and He stamped you with His image. But it is possible to smear mud all over that God-given beauty by our actions.

Let me read it again with that picture in mind. Proverbs 11:22, “Like a gold ring in a pig's snout
is a beautiful woman without discretion.”

I as I was preparing to teach this, I always get up early on Mondays and pray for you, and pray that our time would be fruitful and that the words we say would hit their mark, which is your heart. I was reminded of another passage. This was in the New Testament. Matthew chapter 26, verse 10. Every text is part of a context. I'll share the context while you're turning there in your Bible. And the context here is a familiar story. Jesus was at Simon's house and in front of a really self-righteous crowd—we'll see why I think they're self-righteous here in a moment. A woman poured out her alabaster jar of perfume, a very expensive offering on the feet of Jesus, and she wiped it with her hair.

Scripture tells us in Matthew chapter 26, verse 8, that the disciples were indignant. That's the word that ESV uses. The disciples were indignant at the wasted resources this woman had used. But Jesus said this, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.”

Beside this verse in the margin of my Bible I have written, “Lord, show me how to do a beautiful thing to You.” That is our prayer for this week. We don't want to be pigs with gold rings on our snouts. We don't want to use the beauty that God has given us and really get through the muck by not exuding Jesus, or by looking out for ourselves, using our beauty to draw it into ourselves. That's not what it's for. But we can thank God for our beauty, and he has given you beauty. And we can say, “I don't want to waste it God, I don't want to be a pig with gold in my nose. I don't want to waste it. I want to live a beautiful life this week before my beautiful King, for Your glory.

So, I'm going to take a moment just to pray that we would be just mud puddles. Right? None of us have it all figured out. We all have muck in our lives. We were mud puddles. But even mud puddles can reflect the beauty and glory of God. And so, as we take everything we've heard, I think we can boil it down to that woman's prayer: help me to do beautiful things. So let me pray.

Lord, thank You that any beauty we have we've been given from You, and we don't want to waste it. We don't want to dig in the ground with it. We don't want the gold of our God-given beauty to be covered up. So, we repeat the prayer of that woman who loved You sacrificially. Help us to do a beautiful thing for You, Lord, we love You. Thank You that You are beautiful, and You make all things beautiful. Help us to live beautiful lives for Your glory this week, amen.

Portia: Amen, Erin Davis. I can always count on you to take us to the Word to make it plain. That's what I like to say to make it plain. So, thank you sister.

Erin: All I’ve got is the Scripture. It’s my pleasure.

Portia: I love it. I love it. All right, guys. I've got the tools to help us stay grounded. And of course, we're talking about beauty. And when I think about beauty, I think about my little girl, Emmy. Emmy wants to be beautiful. There’s my sweet girl. She loves to be dolled up. She had no one to teach her that look. This is the day she got into mommy's lipstick.

So, from an itty-bitty little girl, she has always wanted her daddy and me to affirm her beauty. But I particularly want her perception of beauty to be grounded in God's Word. So, there is nothing wrong with a little bit of lip gloss here and there. But ultimately, I want her to understand God's vision for beauty, His perspective. And if you've got a girl in the world, I know that you probably want that for her too.

And so, this is why I wanted to recommend to you a season of True Girl. True Girl is a part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family just like Grounded. And it's specifically for your little girl. There is a whole season on this topic. It's called “A Conversation about True Beauty and Dignity.” We're going to drop a link to that so that you and your girl can listen to all eight episodes together. Emmy girl and I are gonna be listening to it, and I truly pray that it will bless you.

Erin: I love True Girl. You know, I don't have any girls at my house. But I do want the girls of the world to be equipped to live out God's truth. And so I’m really, really grateful for True Girl.

Anna said this comment, “I think it's interesting that Robin's previous deep dive into the Bible prepared her for this trial. Isn't that how Scripture works?”

And we may not all have facial paralysis. We may not all have something that obvious, but we are all going to age. We're gonna have to wrestle with our ideals of beauty as that happens. I can tell you as I'm hitting my mid-forties that it's a little bit jarring. The beauty of our youth is going to fade if we live long enough and there's other things that can happen. Having babies makes us feel kind of blah there for a while, gaining weight which comes as we age can make us feel that way. So just like God prepared Robin, I would encourage you, if you haven't dug into God's Word to find what he really says about beauty. Let this be your memo to do that. You don't know what that might mean to you later on in life. Great episode, really grateful for Robin’s testimony.

Portia: Yes, me too, Erin.

Erin: And anytime I get to see Emmy with her lips painted is a good day, that was so sweet.

Portia: That girl cannot stay out of my lip gloss, like this is an everyday thing.

Erin: I love it. I guess that’s one perk of being the only woman in a house of five men is nobody steals my lip gloss and nobody steals my hairbrush. So, there are some perks.

Portia: Well, consider yourself blessed then sister.

Erin: I do.

Portia: This has been a great episode, and it makes me all the more enthusiastic for next week. I've been reading comments about how so many women have been saying how much they look forward to Monday mornings.

Erin: Me too.

Portia: I think Erin and myself and Dannah would all affirm the same, that we really look forward to Monday mornings and being with you and sharing with you. And I'm looking forward to next Monday morning because we're gonna be talking about studying God's Word. So, I want to ask you: has your study of God's Word gotten a little dry?

It happens to all of us. Next week, we'll pour some Miracle Grow on our Bible study, particularly our Bible study habits. He's coming with lots of ideas for how to freshen up your love for God's Word, and I know I need that right now, guys.

Erin: Me too. All right, mud puddles, you know what to do? Give God glory this week, and come right back here next Monday. We're going to wake up with perspective together next week on Grounded.

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