Looking for Lovely

Annie Downs is someone you almost instinctively think of as a best friend—even if you’ve never met her in person. She’s bright, funny, articulate, and her love of Christ shines through her every word, both spoken and written.

Annie is a born communicator and has a passion for spreading God’s Word and His love. She also travels nationally to speak to and connect with women of all ages about God’s love in everyday moments.

As if that wasn’t enough, Annie is a prolific author of four books. She’s written two books for younger women: Perfectly Unique, a spiritual growth book for high school and college girls, and Speak Love, a challenge to women on how to use their words to make a difference in the world.

Let’s All Be Brave, Annie’s third book details the power we each have to make a difference. She admitted writing it stretched her spiritually and left her feeling exhausted. She was left facing some spiritual hurts and instead of working through them, she wanted to turn and run away. Then God whispered, “What if you don’t run? What if we face this together?”

This spiritual shift was the genesis for her fourth book, Looking for Lovely. It is about the power of hope, perseverance, and finding the beautiful in every day. In a world where it’s easy to bury hurts in unhealthy habits or behind a false image, Annie shows us there is a different way. By actively seeking out the beauty God has placed in our lives—and in ourselves—we can embrace hope, which fuels us through hard times and helps us live joyfully and instead see God and His beauty in the everyday.

Annie wants us to learn to look for the lovely all around us and collect it, hold it close, and see how God drops beautiful things into our lives at just the right time to help us step forward on our own paths. Learning to love the life you have.   

Just Between Us was blessed to be able to chat with Annie to talk about her journey in finding the lovely and beautiful in her life. 

JBU: What does it mean to look for lovely?

Annie:  Looking for lovely is finding beautiful in your everyday life. It could be what we tend to think of as the “little things,” like a gorgeous day or beautiful flowers or grabbing sushi with friends. It can be big things, too, like getting a new job.

It doesn’t always have to be about us, either. Celebrating other people’s accomplishments is looking for lovely too. Celebrating other people—that reminds me not to give up on the life you have. My friends may have something really awesome happen to them that I would love too, but I still find joy in celebrating them!

JBU:

How do we develop a habit of looking for lovely? What role does gratitude play?

Annie: Looking for lovely is absolutely a habit—it’s something you develop and choose to do. Try being purposeful and giving thanks to at least one thing a day. Tell yourself “I’m not going to bed until I find something that made this life better or easier or happier.” Or at every meal, notice something that’s good, kind, or beautiful. Looking for lovely is a habit you build for yourself, with your community, family, and friends.

JBU:

What is the correlation between beauty and perseverance?

Annie: I’m not great at persevering or seeing the beauty when life gets hard. However, beauty is what makes it possible to keep going. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? It’s not just in the things everyone sees, but it is what you see, the unique moments God gives you to collect up and hold and draw strength from. Had I seen any beauty in me, maybe I wouldn’t have walked such an unhealthy path for so long.

I need to find beautiful if I’m going to hang in there. I need it in my life daily. I need it in my heart. I need it in my soul to withdraw when things feel hard. So I decided to start looking.

JBU:

How did you do that?

Annie: I’ve been struggling with this my whole life—looking for the beautiful amid the hurt and ugly. I need beauty. I need to see the lovely in my every day. I actually crave it. Maybe because I’ve felt it missing in my heart for so long. So I’ve been actively pursuing it, trying to find it around every corner, and ever hoping it is just right there because I do love beautiful things. So I’m filling my mind and eyes and memories with good things, good gifts from God, so that my tank is refueled, so that my parched soul is soothed.        

JBU:

How have others helped you find the beautiful?

Annie: I’ll be honest; there aren’t days I don’t get overwhelmed by things! Even if you are incredibly positive, it doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have days when life, work, or struggles feel like too much. However, if it gets to be two or three days when the bad seems to stick around, I invite other people in to help me see the good. Pain can be overwhelming, and darkness can feel really dark when you’re alone. Inviting people in offers a balance—things may still not be great, but someone you trust can help point out the good and help you see it. And just help you feel like you’re not alone.

JBU:

What compelled you to write Looking for Lovely?

Annie: Because I didn’t want to live my life anymore, how it had been going, with me running from my pain. I thought, “What if I actually felt all this pain, really let myself feel it, and deal with it instead of running from it?” So I started counseling.

By inviting a professional Christian counselor into my pain, I was able to begin releasing the hurt and gain a helpful perspective that began moving me forward into a healthier, happier place.  Once I faced it, I asked God, “What do I do with this?” Sometimes His answer was, “Be sad. Feel the sadness, sit with it.” It may not have gone away immediately, but sitting with it was a way of processing and working through it. It was definitely better than ignoring it, because it would only come up again if I did that.

Other times, God’s answer would be “talk about it.” But the first step was to confront it, which is something I had never done before.    

I didn’t want to run and be a quitter anymore. I decided to face it and choose a different way of actually dealing with it. I thought, “What if I found something good worth focusing on that kept me from giving up?” A big part of that was actively looking for the lovely in my life.  Trusting God to be with me through the really hard stuff, but always showing me there is good during those times, too.

Ultimately, it was about my desire to be a person who is full of hope and not a quitter. I believe if you’re full of hope that helps you get through and finish the hard things. And when you finish the hard things, you’re full of hope. It’s really a circle. I wanted to take people on that journey with me and help them through it, too. And a big part of that was finding the beautiful in my own life.

JBU:

Tell us about the pain that kept you from experiencing the lovely in your life?

Annie: I grew up with a lot of shame over my body and quitting everything because I never felt good enough. I was overweight from the time I was in fourth grade, hated my body, and felt ugly. I thought nothing is beautiful here. As my feeling toward myself got morphed and complicated and broken, so did my relationship with food. Food was the enemy…and friend. I felt like my body wasn’t okay. I went to my first Weight Watchers in sixth grade. I ping-ponged between fad diets throughout high school and college to no avail. It was a heartbreaking battle that I knew I was going to lose and be at the center of my pain for the rest of my life. In college, I started listening to the whispered lies: I heard I was ugly; I was a failure, a quitter, unlovable. My story is like many other women I know—the mirror has lied, and the enemy has whispered for years, and how we can’t look at ourselves and find anything lovely.

JBU:

How did things change?

Annie: I’d been asking God for a miracle. In that process I started counseling which was so hard. I knew that I needed to be brave. I thought maybe that’s where healing comes from. Maybe being brave about my brokenness for the first time in my life was going to bring healing. Initially, I thought I needed to be repaired. But my counselor showed me that my need was significantly deeper than that. I actually needed to be rebuilt. And rebuilding anything that is over thirty years old takes a lot of time and strength and perseverance.

Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons” (The Message)! A fresh start. A new creation. I needed both of those. But I also needed strength of heart to hold on until God could complete the work He had begun.

I had walked away from this place before, but now I was more broken and wounded and knew that to dig into it would mean more. I decided if I was really going to survive this, it had to be worth it. It had to have some sort of worthy redemption. It had to be beautiful.

I don’t know why, but I decided to stick it out this time, to really try to see if there was a healthier version of me on the other side of my broken. I could feel something beautiful growing inside of me for the first time in my life.

JBU:

How did you continue when it got hard?

Annie: To stay in this place, I knew it was going to take a lot of looking for lovely. I needed to find a reason to show up and not give up on this critical journey. As I thought back on my life, the beautiful things, though far and few between, were the knots on the rope that helped me keep climbing. Ultimately, it was the hope that there was something more beautiful just outside my view.

JBU:

How do we “find” lovely in hard times?

Annie: Try to actively look for beautiful moments. No matter what, remember God is still in control. He is good, kind, and what He’s doing on this planet is good, even when bad things happen. Sometimes you just have to actively look for the good. Sometimes the beauty in anything, especially the hard stuff, is that Jesus is still on the throne.

I do a lot of things that sound simple, but make a huge difference. For example, I write things on my bathroom mirror. Encouraging words from God’s Word that I would be forced to look at and read. Psalms, Proverbs…positive encouragement. I even have notes in my car!

I try to make practical, easy choices like listening to positive and uplifting music in the car. It’s these little steps and actions that build you up and help you see the lovely—even in unlovely circumstances.

I am continually looking for things to refresh me, even if they are small things. Like taking breaks every so often, and going for a walk. It feels good and God always shows me all the beauty around me. Or taking a nap! By taking breaks from the trenches of life, we’ll find more time to find the joy in life.

JBU:

What is something lovely God has dropped into your life recently?

Annie: I had a wonderful dinner with some really dear friends of mine. What’s amazing is I moved to Nashville nine years ago. I had moved here with four people I had met before, but no one I had a real history with together. Yet at that dinner, I realized I was part of this great community of women.

It was bittersweet, because we were together to celebrate a friend who was moving away. But catching up, and laughing, and being part of that community…that evening was something lovely that God gave all of us. It was a gift.

Another thing He’s dropped into my life lately is some really beautiful sunsets. Sunrises are great, too, but the sunsets here seem just a little bit longer and are so beautiful. Lately, I’ve been working long days, so it’s been cool to have the days end with beautiful sunsets. It reminds me that God is still telling stories, He’s still painting things.

JBU:

How has this search for lovely changed you?

Annie: I am a different Annie than I used to be. I had to be broken to be rebuilt. So often, it’s our breakdowns that need to come right before we have breakthroughs. My cape of shame is gone, and my days of constant self-hate have passed. What God has done in my heart and life (and body, to be honest) in the last two years is nothing short of a miracle. I used to be a quitter, now I cross more finish lines than ever before. And I’m intentionally living a healthier lifestyle.

JBU:

What is a lesson we can take from looking for lovely?

Annie: Looking for the beauty and lovely in life is something you need to work toward and have perseverance. For years, I didn’t know how to persevere for anything. The last couple of years, I learned how to quit quitting. Now I finish what I start, with a better understanding of God. In difficult times, I see Him on the other side of any pain I’m going through.

JBU:

What word of encouragement do you have for us?

Annie: Be the kind of woman to persevere through the hard things—persevering changes your life. It truly changes your life. Romans 5 talks about how we can glory in our suffering, because it produces perseverance and grows our character.

It also talks about the hope of the glory of God. We need to treat hope as if it’s this free thing—hang it on the walls, tattoo it on our hearts and minds. God—His love and His hope—He’s with us even through the difficult struggles. Paul says in Acts 20:24, we are meant to finish the race we’ve started. That’s what I try to do, and I encourage others to do the same.

It’s fascinating how often what happens in our physical bodies is a reflection of what happens in our spirits. For instance, training for things, like running races, hurts—it’s a painful growing experience. But the next time it’s easier. You keep working at it, you work through the hard stuff, you get stronger, and you can finish the race. The same thing happens when we actively work through the hard stuff emotionally and spiritually. Instead of running from it, we run through it. And we get through it with Him. As a result, our spirits and our relationship with God grow stronger. We persevere and finish the race with a heart full of hope, ready for the next big thing. And that’s where the lovely is found. And when we find it, both in us and the world—it changes everything.

JBU:

How did you finally find lovely?

Annie: In the last several years, through my brokenness journey, God has opened my eyes to all these little moments of lovely around me. They’ve always been there; I just never had eyes to see them. It’s not that my life is different; is just that I see it differently. So it feels like a brand-new life. I feel like since I gave honest words to my brokenness and started to get healthy, God has shown up and walked me into more healing than I even knew to ask for. And in it, He is opening my eyes.

And as I’m collecting those moments that matter, I’m actually seeing more of Him. Because in the end, that’s what this is all about. When you find Jesus, you have found lovely. He is everything we need.  

~ By Susan Vanselow