The Glow Up That Lasts
Glow-ups are everywhere these days. Every few days, another reel hits my feed—some actress who somehow looks exactly the same as she did twenty years ago. In the age of Ozempic and AI filters, we can all look like movie stars—at least on our screens.
As exciting as it sounds to imagine a thinner, younger version of myself, I can’t help but sense the danger. It’s fleeting at best and imaginary at worst. Still, even knowing that, I catch myself scrolling through photos of celebrities who’ve lost forty pounds in four months and whispering one word: how?
I know this obsession isn’t healthy. I feel it in my bones. I’ve made quiet vows to go to bed earlier, to put my phone down and pick up an actual book instead. But the dopamine rush is real. The pull is powerful. Like all the things we use to feed our insecurities, scrolling feels comforting for a moment—then leaves me emptier than before.
Social media is, at its core, superficial. It was designed to make us crave comparison—to believe that image equals value. The art of the medium is to distill flashy content into tiny, addictive bites that light up our pleasure centers, not our souls.
Imagine living on a diet made entirely of sugar. Delicious at first, but eventually your body weakens. Your energy dips. You crave more but are never satisfied. That’s what constant scrolling does to the spirit. We are surrounded by spiritual junk food disguised as something nourishing and whole.
So why talk about social media?
Because for those of us rebuilding after divorce, we’re especially vulnerable to its dark side. Divorce hits hard. Our self-worth takes a mortal blow. When infidelity or betrayal is part of the story, the wound cuts deeper still. We scroll because we’re lonely. We scroll because it distracts us from the ache. But every perfect photo—every “effortless” life—becomes another reminder of what we’ve lost, or think we’ve lost.
When we feed that pain on a steady diet of comparison, we create the perfect storm of insecurity. It’s not just bad for us—it’s brutal. We start to believe we’re behind, broken, or somehow less than the women who seem to glow effortlessly through their curated feeds.
But the glow-up we truly need isn’t skin-deep. It doesn’t come from filters or weight loss or perfect lighting. The glow-up that matters happens when we learn to live in truth—to let God rewrite our reflection from the inside out. It’s the quiet kind of beauty that comes when peace begins to outshine pain.
You might ask, how? This is the real question. The kind of glow-up that lasts begins with faith—a faith built on a living relationship with God.
After divorce, loss, or trauma, transformation becomes the true goal—not the superficial kind, but the kind that renews us completely. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)
Renewing the mind means spending our energy differently—less on appearances and more on connection with God.
That kind of spiritual connection isn’t as impossible as it sounds. It starts with making time to pray honestly, to read and meditate on Scripture, and to allow silence long enough for God to speak.
When I was going through my divorce, that connection absolutely saved me. If I had believed social media, I would have seen only what the world saw: a woman past her prime—overweight, aging, and no longer desirable. I would have chased worth through fad diets and new makeup, praying they might make me feel less rejected, less alone.
But they never could.
The truth is, all those things only fed my insecurity. Only God made me feel loved for exactly who I was. Only my relationship with Him gave me hope that, no matter what the future held, He would walk beside me.
Maybe the real glow-up isn’t becoming the version of ourselves that looks perfect on the outside.
Maybe it’s becoming the version that’s finally set free.
