As many of you know, I love “Created to Be His Help Meet” by Debi Pearl, yet I quickly learned after buying cases of this book and handing them out to every woman I knew, that some women were offended by it. They claimed Debi was harsh and cruel. One such story Debi tells often comes up to justify these women’s claims about Debi. It’s in the second chapter on page 27 in the first edition of her book.

In this story, Debi calls a woman an “overweight hillbilly woman” and later, “this woman was ugly, I mean, hillbilly ugly which is worse than regular ugly.” Is Debi harsh and cruel for calling this woman ugly? If you take the story in context, no, she was not. She was trying to get a very important point across to women. When this woman was smiling, laughing, and giggling, men were attracted to her. Debi’s husband called her a “cute little lady!”

But later when Debi and Michael saw her in a grocery store, she was angry and bitter at her child. Gone were the qualities that had attracted her to others, and she looked downright ugly.

If you read the next page, what Debi wants women to learn are these principles: 1) Her glorious smile was her most valuable asset. Her face was always so radiant, her smile so infectious, her laughter so sweet, and her eyes so earnest that people simply saw her as cute; 2) Everyone is drawn to a smile and wants to be a friend to someone overflowing with goodwill. Men are highly attracted to smiles; 3) Women spend billions of dollars a year to make themselves more attractive, but the most effective beauty aid is free – a joyful smile.

The first assignment I gave to women when mentoring through this book years ago was to begin smiling at their husbands. The next week, they would all give a great report of the impact this had upon their husbands. One woman’s husband even asked if she had lost weight because something was so different about her!

No one knows who this woman is, just as no one knows who the “fat” king was who God wrote about in His Word. Debi was not being harsh nor cruel to call someone ugly who nobody knows. She was using this as an illustration to let us know that a joyful spirit is FAR more beautiful to our husbands than anything we can do to ourselves. Our outward appearance is fading, but others can still find us beautiful if we have a merry heart and smile often! This is encouragement for women of all ages and appearances! They need this in a culture that only celebrates youth and does whatever it takes to stay young looking, no matter the cost or harm to themselves. It’s a blessing to grow old while continuing to be joyful and content!

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
Proverbs 17:22

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