The quest for physical beauty seems to have become a global obsession. Advice on how to attain narrow, cultural ideals of beauty saturates print media, the airwaves, and cyberspace. Tips on tanning, weight loss, wrinkle reduction, and teeth whitening abound, and yet their results can't compare with the transforming effect of a change in thought—or what I call a spiritual makeover. The three best beauty tips I ever received fall into the spiritual makeover category and came from a nonagenarian, a newlywed, and a preschooler.

Lesson of the lady with the smile

My friend Mildred, a Christian Science healer for most of her adult life, was still helping and praying for people into her advanced years. Most impressive to me was her willingness to learn, to progress, and to grow each day. She loved to tell stories on herself, and one of them continues to instruct me.

While reading one morning in the living room of her retirement home, she glimpsed a woman she didn't recognize on the opposite side of the room. She thought about waving or saying good morning, but decided against making the effort. The woman didn't look too friendly anyway. As she studied the two books on her lap, the Bible and Science and Health, the thought came to her that no matter how unfriendly the stranger across the room might look, she could behave in a loving manner. She looked up from her books. The woman still looked pretty grumpy, but Mildred prayed quietly to see the woman as God saw her—lovely and perfect. She smiled and nodded at the woman. The woman smiled and nodded right back! That's when Mildred realized that she was looking in a mirror—and that grumpy-now-smiley woman was her own reflection.

I often think about Mildred's loving reflection in the mirror when I pray the Lord's Prayer at church on Sunday mornings and listen to its spiritual interpretation read from Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science. In explanation of the familiar line, "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "And Love is reflected in love" (p. 17).

The look of Love

I'm forever asking couples how they met. My favorite match-up story is that of a close friend, told to me soon after she married. The day before she met her future husband, she was feeling particularly unattractive. An unsightly rash covered much of her body and was most evident on her face. Not only was she uncomfortable, she was brokenhearted that she would need to cancel a much anticipated weekend with a group of friends in the mountains.

Like my friend Mildred, she began to pray. She mentally reached out to God to ask if she should even go on this trip, looking as awful as she did. Almost immediately, the thought came, "Let your friends love you. Love them enough to know they will see what is true and real about you." This inspiration—to respect her friends enough to let them see below skin-deep—freed her to continue her plans with gratitude. Although her appearance didn't change, she said she felt completely different: less consumed by self-consciousness and less distracted by discomfort. She had a joyful weekend and felt enveloped by the love of her friends. One in the group, whom she'd never met, offered to drive her to their destination. He says he never noticed a rash of any kind. He was struck by the radiance and lovingkindness of the girl in the passenger seat—and still is, 30 years after their marriage.

I've used this example many times over the years when praying to heal myself and others of life-limiting self-consciousness. It reminds me of another favorite statement from Science and Health: "Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful" (p. 248).

All I ever knew I learned from my preschooler

My daughter taught me this final beauty tip when she was only four. I had always prided myself in the "natural look," in part to justify my total lack of interest in makeup and clothes. Taking little time on my appearance had almost become a badge of honor—until Abby stopped me in my tracks one afternoon with the question, "You're not going to visit your mother looking like that, are you?"

Now understand that my mother lived less than three miles away and we saw her almost daily. My daughter's insistence on dressing up to prepare for these visits often tried my patience. That day, as I watched her carefully comb her hair in anticipation of seeing her beloved grandmother, my thought changed. Motivated by respect for what she viewed as an important event, this child was demonstrating devotion to another by her level of care for herself. I realized that my lack of caring and preparation might be even more selfish than the primping I self-righteously condemned in others. Right then and there I changed my attitude, and my clothes. I felt as though I had "put on the new man," as the Apostle Paul described the demand for a whole-cloth change of thought (Eph. 4:24).

The complete makeover

Putting on that new man, "which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," is the spiritual makeover that transforms lives. It can't be attained from the outside, by maneuvering or manipulating a material body. Beauty blooms from within. Its source is God, divine Love. The effort to hold thought in line with divine Love made my friend Mildred more beautiful as years progressed. As for my friend once consumed by a rash, her complexion is as pure as her unselfish thoughts, which continue to bless her friends and family in abundance. My now 17-year-old daughter's care for and patience with others—especially with a mother in desperate need of fashion tips—is a key source of her attractiveness.

When Abby presented me with a beautiful photograph of our backyard lilies recently, all I could think of was Christ Jesus' all-important advice: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" (Matt. 6:28, 29). css