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Overview
He Numbered the Pores on My Face is for teens who long for beauty, love, and rest. Any labels you long for today might as well be “looks good in butterfly clips” if you are not rooted in who Jesus says you are, because any self-centered identity is going to leave you in the same place: unfulfilled and unhappy. Girls will relate to Scarlet’s stories as she discusses hottie lists, eating disorders, and haphazard beauty in a way that is both humorous and thought provoking. Through it all, she describes how she found peace by learning to see life not through a mirror but through a Savior who shapes who we were, who we are, and who we will be.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781535951081 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | B&H Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 07/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
| Age Range: | 13 - 18 Years |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE HOTTIE LIST
In 1999, my dad found "The Hottie List" under my mattress. It was a well-thought-out ranking of the eighteen hotties I went to school with on the basis of cuteness, dreaminess, and how likely I felt they were to fall in love with me. The conclusion at the bottom was a succinct exclamation.
"Ayyyeeeeeee! I just love boys soooooooo much!"
Three things:
1. The "Ayyyeeeeeee!" was because I lived in Miami. Note: If you didn't know, Miami is roughly 99.9 percent Hispanic. "Aye!" is kind of like saying "Oh man!" or "Wow!"
2. Yes, that was a real sentence I wrote on a real list of real boys' names that I still remember.
3. The list was buried in my bed and, had the world been fairer and had my dad been a less thorough bed-maker, would have stayed buried in my bed forever.
You see, I had this complex about growing up. I felt guilty and ashamed that I was starting to like boys. Ranking hotties, for whatever reason, was a secret so classified that it had to remain hidden in my heart and under my mattress.
When I got home from school that day and heard my dad say, "Scarlet, I was changing the sheets, and I found ...," I instantly collapsed into a puddle and let out a sound very similar to a whale noise option on a sound machine app.
I knew what was under those sheets. I now knew that he knew what was under those sheets. We both knew that I had a list, and that it was a list full of hotties.
(Whale whimper)
I spent what felt like the rest of the evening, but was probably more like ten minutes, sobbing weakly in the corner of my messy closet. I had my little sister bring me two slices of Papa John's at dinnertime because I was hungry but too devastated to emerge from my corner of mismatched socks and outgrown shoes.
Why did I have such icky feelings about my hottie list? I think part of it was that it all felt so far-fetched — the idea that any of the eighteen hotties I listed could ever feel the same way about me. Or even close to it. But mostly I didn't want anyone on earth to know that I had thirteen-year-old-who-won't-be-named ranked ahead of another thirteen-year-old-who- won't-be-named, simply because one time he accidentally (but maybe not too accidentally) bumped into me in line at the lunchroom, and that seemed like a really right way to start a life together.
Hotties All Over the USA
I grew up going to elementary school with the same seventy-five-ish kids in Miami until seventh grade, when my mom moved us back to Los Angeles for her job. I thought my class was pretty small compared to classes down the street that schooled kids my age by the thousands. But this new school in LA, well, let me put it this way: there were two boys in my grade and eight girls. We were a class of only ten humans. There was a very distinct "popular group" and a clearly noticeable "outsider" cluster. I was immediately well loved by members of the less cool cluster and by my English teacher, Mr. Chapman.
Also, because the boys were scarce, my hottie list was pretty short that year.
I really liked this one boy — let's call him Johnny — but he was too cute and too sweet and too talented and just generally too out of my league to even waste hottie list space on (though that didn't stop me from reciting my "I love you too" speech in my mirror with him in mind. If you'd like to revisit the speech, flip back to the intro). He was a drummer, and he had impossibly bright-blue eyes. Well-liked by the populars, he was also kind to the cluster. My approach with him was basically just to try not to take every kind gesture he directed my way as a marriage proposal.
But I didn't stop with Johnny. I decided to add another out-of-my-league guy to the list. Due to the shortage and unattainability of the (two) boys in my grade, I started observing boys in other grades. Well, one boy. He was a boy a year ahead of me; I'll call him Jamie (but that's not his name either). I remember his real name, of course, and his spiky hair. He hung out with the populars in my grade and his. Tragically, I was caught in the cluster.
Something you also need to know about this period of time is that a movie called Clueless was a thing. The main character, Cher, was blonde and pretty and cool (I mean, duh; her name was Cher — more on the importance of names and popularity in chapter 9), and when guys liked her, she'd roll her eyes and flip her hair and say things like, "Ugh! As if!" or "What-ever!" while making a W with her fingers.
To an oldest child with no real gauge on what teen romance was supposed to look like other than hearing the lyrics of Celine Dion (she was the Adele of my day) songs, my brain told me that whatever Cher said to boys who liked her was the cool, acceptable, and appropriate response.
The problem was, I wasn't cool, and by most teen guy standards, I wasn't pretty either. But I didn't know that yet. I just knew what Cher would do.
So, one day, I was walking up the outdoor stairwell to get to my next class when none other than Jamie himself, in all his spike-haired splendor, came up behind me and said, "Scarlet, will you go out with me?"
He couldn't see my face, which I'm sure had a huge smile plastered on it. I was too excited to be right in the middle of what I thought was my first romantic experience to notice that he and his friends were already giggling when I swung my head around and barked, in total Cher-from-Clueless fashion, "GO OUT WITH YOU? UGH! AS IF!"
This is a true story.
But somewhere between the "ugh" and the "AS IF," I read the room and realized I wasn't being asked out at all. I was being made fun of.
Humiliation is just not a fun feeling at all. When you think you're being flattered and realize you're the butt of the joke, it's completely the WORST. And when it happens during your Cher impression, it is somehow more the worst. And it opens your heart up to believing some pretty terrible lies.
Hottie-Rejection-Induced Lies
The whole "Ugh! As if!" incident made a string of questions start looping in my head, every day, all the time. I'm not sure if these crippling questions had been there before, but after the Jamie joke crushed my heart, I crawled back to my cluster, and the questions came continually.
Am I ugly?
Am I weird?
Am I a joke?
Why am I a joke?
Do I need more eyebrow scrunch on my "AS IF!"?
What am I doing wrong?
Am I doing anything right?
What do the cool girls have that I don't?
Why do I get the trendy things exactly one second after they stop being cool, every time, without fail?
Will I ever be pretty?
How does someone get pretty?
Will I ever be admired?
Will I ever be loved?
Our hearts have a natural enemy (remember that mean, convincing voice we talked about in the Introduction?), and he loves it when our inner monologue is full of lies. His name is Satan. He is real, and he loves these questions. You've probably already heard them. You've probably already asked them. He loves to prey on girls in middle school, high school, college, and even women in their thirties and beyond, causing us to question whether or not we are loved.
He especially loves to get us thinking about our past mistakes.
Our enemy wants us to feel unloved, and then he wants us to spend every moment of the rest of our lives remembering the moment we believed those lies with our whole hearts.
He wants to lead us into horrible moments of humiliation, regret, and sin, and then bring our minds back to those moments over and over like a playlist on repeat. He wants us to set up a tent and live there. Because if we live there, we are crippled. If we live there, we are slaves.
The First Lies
Have you heard of the first girl who ever lived? Her name was Eve.
Please fight the urge to skim over this part because you've heard/read/seen the story a dozen/hundred/thousand times.
Listen: I'm with you. I've heard it countless times as well. I know that Eve's story can easily become this kind of bogus-sounding tale you feel detached from. Like, Yeah, she was this old lady who talked to a snake and ate fruit and ruined everything and hid in a shrub and messed everything up for the rest of us, who would have totally preferred living in a perfect garden.
But let's just think about this on a more personal level.
Before Eve was a sinner and a snake-talker and a fruit-eater, she was just a girl. The first one. Eve had no other girls to compare herself to on Instagram. Because there were no other girls. And there was no Instagram. Can you even imagine that life?
And God loved this one and only girl fully and completely. And she walked with Him, and He told her and showed her, through the blessing of a perfect world and friendship with Him, that she was loved and she was special. With His acts and His words, God showed this first girl that she could trust Him. I have created you so that we can be together, and I'm giving you and this first boy everything I've made.
But soon, even with no other girls around, with no Netflix or social media feeds, she started hearing other words. The enemy of her heart was there at the beginning with lies that have been told since the very beginning. She heard those little lies and the sly doubts and questions that the enemy planted in her heart. ... Does God really love you? Is He really faithful and true? Are you missing out on something better? Are you not good enough?
Eve doubted her Maker and questioned her value and chose to sin in hopes that she would become something more. Something enough. She ate the fruit, trying to quiet the questions, and she changed the course of the world.
She and that first boy brought sin into the world, which brought with it pain, evil, suffering, doubts, hopelessness, insecurity, loneliness, and so many tears. Ultimately, her sin fractured her perfect relationship with her Creator, the one thing that would have really made her happy.
And like the many ailments and tendencies we have inherited from our parents and grandparents, a sin-infused nature has also been passed down to every single one of us. We continue to cry over the pain that sin brought with it. The questions have carried over. The lies have lasted a really long time.
We believe the lies of mean guys and mean girls and a sinister enemy because we were born with hearts that distrust God. We were born chasing things that lead to death and running from the only One who knows how to perfectly love us.
It's all right there in our origin story. In Genesis 3, the first recorded words of Satan are, "Did God really say, 'You can't eat from any tree in the garden'?" (v. 1).
Satan is so evil and shifty. He didn't flat-out say the lie. He made Eve consider it herself. He set the stage for HER to birth the lie.
Maybe for you, it starts out something like, Is what that girl said about me true?
Maybe that lie leads to Am I really worth anything?
And maybe that lie leads to Is there something I can do to get what God isn't giving me?
And paying attention to those lies and doubts leads to actions that are sinful, which ultimately separates you from the only One who can give you joy and peace inside. The only One who can really tell you who you are.
Maybe you join your peers as they make fun of the quiet girl who always eats lunch by herself, and that makes you feel like you fit in for a second, but then you remember that God's Word says, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40).
Maybe you cheat on that math test you didn't study for because, hey, you need a good grade, and maybe you get away with it, but for some reason, when you pray, it feels like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. You're feeling what the Bible calls conviction. Your sin is literally separating you from a relationship with the God who made you. "But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen" (Isaiah 59:2).
And once Satan has gotten you to that point one time, he will take you back to that horrible moment as many times as he can. We've all been there, but we don't have to stay there.
The Opinions of the Hotties
Being a teenager is a unique moment in life. It's a time when people are good at observing the world but don't have much experience living in it yet. It's easy to see life but hard to know what it means. It's easy to identify hotties but difficult to know how to feel about them.
It's so crazy to me that I can think through the hotties on my list from 1999 and still remember how important their opinions were to me. They were boys who lived with their parents and played video games, and now that I look at them from this place of more maturity, I can smile and say to my former self, "Oh, little Scarlet! Don't worry about these boys! You've got your whole life ahead of you!"
I suspect that your future self might look back at the things you spend all your time thinking about today and say, "Oh, younger self, don't worry about what that guy said. Don't worry about how you had corn stuck in your teeth at the exact moment the tallest linebacker on the team finally struck up a conversation with you. You've got your whole life ahead of you."
What the hotties think doesn't matter for very long. The opinions of hotties and all the other people in all other places are fickle and fleeting and often look foolish when we are looking back. And rarely are they worthy of prime mattress-hiding placement.
But there is one opinion that matters. There is one first opinion that was shared with the first girl and her first boy. And even though they sinned and we sinned, that first opinion can still be heard because the work of Jesus makes it so.
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.' ... And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed" (Genesis 1:26, 30–31).
For the Goody-Goody and the Train Wreck (Hint: You Are Probably Both)
So maybe you don't cheat on tests. Maybe you spend a lot of brainpower feeling angry and superior over people who do. I don't know whether you're the girl who tries to keep all the rules or whether you're the girl who has broken them and doesn't know how she's going to stop and put her life back together. I'll tell you this though: I've been both, and both girls need the same thing. Girls who have messed up and girls who have exhausted themselves trying not to, girls who break rules and girls who bow to them, girls who try and fail and girls who fail to try, all need Romans 5.
Romans 5:15–17 tells us that sin came into the world through one person, and it tells us that one other person, Jesus, took on the punishment for the sins of all who would believe in Him and offered them new life.
We all need to know that even though the first boy and the first girl broke God's rule and broke our hearts and bought the lies and ruined God's original plan, Jesus fixed everything for us. He obeyed for us, believed for us, lived for us, died for us, and rose for us, so that in Him, God can say again, "It is very good indeed." Neither kind of girl, the goody-goody or the train wreck, can do anything good enough to make God love her more or anything bad enough to make God love her less. Jesus kills the lies and restores the opinion and makes us valuable forever.
This reality I'm talking about — that we are loved and forgiven and approved and free because of what Jesus did for us — is what Christians often call "the gospel." The word gospel means "good news." When we look at the gospel, this message that Jesus came to deliver, we see that His love for us is the only true, forever, trustworthy love we can count on.
Hotties will let us down. Every last one of them, no matter the degree of hotness.
But we're not living to impress hotties — as much as it feels like we might be. We're not even living to impress God Himself; He's already and eternally impressed.
You won't look perfect and act perfect. You won't string enough days in a row where you haven't done something you're ashamed of. If there were a set number of "good" days that could make you holy or if you were even capable of that, Jesus' death would have been the most pointless thing ever.
When I look to my past and remember seventh grade, when I was unloved and humiliated by a boy with spiky hair and a slightly cooler status than mine, I'm not looking far enough. When I look back farther and remember the cross, it's then that I remember the biggest truth and the truest love. The ultimate act of love was when Jesus allowed Himself to be cut off from the perfect love of His Father and He suffered the greatest humiliation so you and I could be free and whole and safe.
The older you get, the more times you'll mess up, and the more times you mess up, the clearer you'll see the weight of this magic love and what it means for your life.
Get this — if your happiness rests on Jesus' ability to love you, you will never be let down, and through the cross, you will always know where to look to remember that you are loved and beautiful and enough.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "He Numbered the Pores on My Face"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Scarlet Hiltibidal.
Excerpted by permission of B&H Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction,
Section 1: The Gospel Redefines Who You Were,
Chapter 1: The Hottie List,
Chapter 2: The Fanny-Pack Fail,
Chapter 3: Bread Smooshing My Grandma,
Section 2: The Gospel Shapes Who You Are,
Chapter 4: How to Hide a Female Adam's Apple for Twelve Years,
Chapter 5: When Everyone Hates You by Accident,
Chapter 6: Laughing at a Fake Funeral,
Chapter 7: Hoping in Hair-Raking Headbands,
Section 3: The Gospel Tells You Who You'll Be,
Chapter 8: Jewelry Shopping at Pet Supermarket,
Chapter 9: I Changed My Name to Sandy,
Chapter 10: Doing Backflips After a Ten-Year Hiatus,
About the Author,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,