To Be a Cover Girl

A surreal feeling washed over me when I glimpsed the cover of the October Woman Alive – there under the new logo was me in my living room, pouring a cup of tea out of a Yankee Doodle teapot, sporting a big smile. I knew the cover was happening, but the shock of actually seeing my photo there felt like a jolt. For I’m not your usual “cover girl” material – no size zero here. And yet it’s wonderful to have real people smiling out from the front of a glossy magazine.

We know our worth is not in our looks, and that God loves us no matter if we’re gussied up in evening wear or clad in our gym clothes after a workout. But do we believe that we’re worth the cover of a magazine? Even writing this post feels indulgent, like I should be apologizing. Instead, I’m going to give thanks that indeed, I’m a woman who is alive, who is made in God’s image, and who wants to love as she’s loved. To extend grace and peace and hope. And to be forgiven for when I fail.

I never guessed before I moved to the UK those many years ago that I’d ever be pictured on a magazine pouring a cup of tea. Tea was something that I bought on my trip to London when I was 21, which I kept in a decorative Jackson’s of Piccadilly canister but never drank. Nor that I’d write a whole chapter about tea in my soon-to-be published book, Finding Myself in Britain. How fun to live our adventures with God.

Over to you – if you were to be pictured on the cover of a magazine, what would you fancy you’d be doing in the photo? And why? How does God surprise you?