In The Christmas Courier, my holiday novella that will come out in October 2026, my heroine thinks this about the hero:

“It wasn’t that Daniel was particularly handsome, probably. He wasn’t not either, of course. He was just…Daniel. That strong, sharp nose, the dark brown hair that was somehow always in need of a trim, even right after a trip to the barber. The mouth always so quick to smile, that she’d dreamed for so many years would kiss her.”

I loved writing this part, because it’s so true, isn’t it? Madeleine, the heroine, has known Daniel literally all her life. And she’s loved him all her life too, in one way or another. She doesn’t love him because of how he looks–but because she loves him, she loves that appearance too. And as for her? Madeleine was self-conscious when she was younger, constantly teased for not being fashionably slender. But Daniel had always told her she was beautiful.

And so, she believed him. Even though she didn’t necessarily love how she looked, she learned to see herself through his eyes, and so she became confident.

This is one of my favorite things about writing romance. Sometimes my characters are traditionally beautiful. Sometimes they’re not. But always, always, always they are seen as beautiful in the eyes of the one who loves them. Sometimes, much like Mr. Darcy’s view of Elizabeth, that grows and changes over time. Sometimes, they see immediately what others don’t. Sometimes, they’re immediately struck by that overt beauty and have to dig down beneath it.

Whatever the story, whatever the character demands, in the end, they all end up at that place where Madeleine in when she looks at Daniel–the place I am when I look at my husband. The place he is when he looks at me.

The place where you see all the features, and they stop adding up to pretty or handsome or ugly or beautiful or any other such label. And instead, they add up to mine. They add up to the one that I love. And once they’re that…well, beauty is a side effect.

It’s probably no coincidence that I wrote Madeleine and Daniel this way, as my body is yet again going through chemo-related changes. I can admit that it’s not easy, and there are moments when I’ve been struggling. 

When I was undergoing full chemo in 2024, I told a friend who was on the same journey, but a month or so behind me, that I found losing my hair to be worse than having lost my hair. I felt better once I’d shaved it, but those days of it coming out by the handful–those were HARD. 

Well, I’m now in a perpetual state of losing. Complete hair loss isn’t expected with my current treatment, but “thinning hair” is my reality right now. Which means that every day, I’m seeing it. Every day, if I touch my hair at all, I come away with two or three or four strands in my fingers. Every time. Day in and day out. It wears on me, yes. I don’t like it.

And sometimes, when I look in the mirror, that’s what I see. The thin patches, the receding hairline. I see the lack of what I usually am. I see the disfigurement from my last surgery. I see the evidence of two years of not enough energy to exercise like I used to.

But you know what happens then? I turn away from the mirror, and I walk out into the room where my husband is. And every time, he looks up at me with eyes of love. Every time, he smiles at me and says, “You’re so pretty.” It doesn’t matter what my hair looks like, or any other part of me. He sees me. And so, I see me too. Just as I see him. The eyes and the dimples and the grin that I love, yes–my love. 

When we think about our self-image, how we see ourselves, I think most of us have probably given some thought to seeing ourselves for who we are, not just how we appear. And I’ve certainly reflected on how we need to see ourselves as God sees us.

Lately, though, I’ve been so grateful that He gives us people who love us, to help us with that. God sees us through the eyes of love–and that’s how we see those we love best too. We don’t love them because they’re beautiful–but they are always beautiful because we love them. And so, the same is true for us.

We are beautiful because we are loved.

I’ve needed that reminder lately…maybe some of you do too. So there it is. It doesn’t matter if you’re classically gorgeous. It doesn’t matter if you’re in shape. It doesn’t matter is your hair’s falling out or if you’ve been changed by surgery or if you have acne or scars or anything else. You are created in the image of God himself, and you are beautiful. Walk in the confidence of that.