A long time ago, a woman was honoured.
Not for her face. Not for her body. Not for what she wore or how loud she could laugh. She was honoured because of who she was.
Somewhere between then and now, we traded that away and told ourselves it was progress.
Her Price
Proverbs 31 asks a question the whole world keeps trying to answer with a mirror.
"Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies."
Proverbs 31:10
Far above rubies. That is not a compliment about her looks. That is a statement about her worth, a worth that was set before she ever picked out a dress.
Hold on to that word: price. Because the world has been running a clearance sale on women for a long time, and it is worth asking how the tag got changed.
When Precious Becomes Common
Here is the thing about value. When something is rare, it is guarded. When something is common, it is disregarded. Cheap, common, overlooked. That is what happens to anything the moment it stops being treated as precious.
Somewhere along the way, women were sold the idea that our value lives on the surface. That if you do not look right, you are not beautiful. That the only time you are really worth something is when you are worth looking at.
Think about how cruel that sum is. Looks do not last. So if your value is your face, then age is not just time passing. It is your worth draining out of you, drop by drop, until you are told you are forgotten.
Look at the women the whole world claims to love. The famous ones. The admired ones. Watch how fast the applause turns the day they gain weight, the day they get older, the day they say the wrong thing. If that is how the world treats the women it says it worships, what does it have planned for the rest of us?
We Do It to Each Other
Here is the part nobody wants to name. It is not only the world doing this to us. We do it to each other. We stopped playing on the same team. We watch each other's faults instead of each other's backs. And if women will not value women, why would we expect anyone else to?
So the stress piles on. It does not come and go. It loads up on us like a lorry that never unloads. When we cannot carry it, we vent at the people we love, at strangers, at the woman in the mirror who is never good enough. Too much. Too little. Too old. Too shy. And we believe it. We take the world's word over God's Word and sentence ourselves for the crime of being human.
That is not freedom. That is a woman working two full time jobs, the career and the appearance, and being told at the end of every day that both came up short.
The Wrong World
But listen. It is not that this is a man's world and we simply do not fit in it. It is that we have been trying to fit into the wrong world entirely.
We have worked so hard on the wrong things. Tighter clothes. A louder laugh. Be sexier, be tougher, be whatever the world rewarded this week. And still it did not make us feel valued, because none of it ever could. You cannot perform your way into a worth you were born with.
Here is the question that changes everything: when did we stop being who we were created to be?
There was an original. Before the world got its hands on the design, God made a woman who was strong and gentle in the same breath. Warm. Discerning. Beautiful from the inside out, the kind of beauty you carry in the way you move, not the way you pose. The kind our daughters actually want to become.
That woman still exists. She is not gone. She has simply been buried under a hundred voices telling her she is not enough. So we are not going to earn our value today. We are going to remember it.
Your Worth Was Never Up for a Vote
If you want to be respected, start by respecting yourself. If you want to be valued, understand that your value was never up for a vote. You do not become precious by chasing the world's approval. You become free the day you stop asking for it.
As a baby, you cried to have your needs met. As a child, you wanted to be seen. As a teenager, you longed for attention. And now, as a woman, you want what you have always wanted: to be valued. Everyone wants that, no matter their age, where they are from or who they are.
And here is the truth the beauty industry will never sell you, because there is no profit in a woman who already knows her worth. You will never truly be valued by the world until you understand what real value is and where yours comes from.
It was set by the God who made you. It is above rubies. It does not age, it does not fade, and it does not go on sale. That is not something you find in a mirror. That is something you remember on your knees.
This Week
Before you fix your face, fix your gaze. Look at yourself the way Heaven does.
A long time ago, a woman was honoured for who she was. She still can be. She is you.