Finding Beauty

I lay next to my beautiful brunette beauty, in the quiet of her bedroom where all I can hear is the hum of the fan and the gentle whispers that escape from London's sweet lips while she drifts off to sleep. I snuggle close and gently wipe away the whisps of hair that have fallen into her eyes.  She is a beauty.  Silky brown hair, big brown eyes with lashes that go on forever. Her lips are a sweet, girly shade of pink and they form perfect little puckers while she sleeps.

My mind wanders to all the ways I want her to feel beautiful. And I remember all the ways I did not when I was a young girl.

How is it that false or foolish things that people speak over us when we’re ten years old can hold more weight than the truth that people who love us speak throughout our entire lives? Why do I accept as cold, hard, truth the sentences that slipped careless from a stranger all those years ago and never pause to examine if they contain any truth, just swallow them hook, line and sinker?

I have ugly hair and don't measure up.

An assessment I have owned as mine since I was a child and only because a stranger, a random meeting in a mall, let her words slip carelessly from her mouth and into the soul of a blossoming little girl.

I remember how my cheeks burned. I wanted to run away but I stood paralyzed while she ran her fingers through my hair and said "this looks like hell". I remember for years afterward the feelings of inferiority and insecurity that accompanied me through middle school and high school and life. I just wanted to be pretty. Not in a notice-me kind of way.  More like a don't-notice me kind of way. I was the ugly duckling, sticking out from the crowd, receiving exclusion from peers and pity from adults.

These thoughts smack me in the head as I’m lying next to my brunette beauty. I flip them over in my head – ugly, unworthy, unaccepted. I remind myself that those statements are not a reflection on me as a person – they don’t describe my passions, my accomplishments, my faith, my qualities as a friend or mother or wife.

Why then have these two statements come along for the ride all these years? Why do they still sting like the day that I stood in that mall corridor? How in the world do they carry that much weight? I’m astonished to discover how a stranger (who, if memory serves me correctly, wore entirely too much makeup) has basically been back-seat-driving my definition of beautiful for years. Me with the unruly hair and the evolving ten-year-old figure could not have been beautiful. I knew this from the tone of her voice and the look on her face, a mix of pity and disgust. And these words grew and grew until they had strong arms and long legs that strangled my mind, suffocated my confidence, and squeezed the life out of a blossoming little girl...fifteen year old...twenty-one year old...thirty four year old woman.

I watch London's long eyelashes flutter on that porcelain white skin that smells so sweet and feels warm to my lips as I kiss her goodnight. Lying next to my baby girl who is still unmarred by the opinions of others I am afraid.  I fear that the careless words of another will define beauty with lies.

The more I think about my beautiful girls and the beauty I want them to grow into, the more I realize I will need to own my own first. I will need to weed out the lies that have snuck, sometimes unnoticed, into my self image so that I am ready to do battle against any that come against them.

I must be beautiful in thought before I am beautiful anywhere else.
I will be a passionate beauty hunter – quick to recognize it in myself and translate it for my girls. Beauty in attitude, beauty in excitement, beauty in laughter, beauty in tears, beauty in acceptance of differences, beauty in good friends, beauty in service, beauty in grace, beauty in forgiveness.

And yes, beauty in Ava's thick, wavy, blonde hair, London's silky, shiny, brown hair and Heidi's sunkissed, golden blonde curls.

I will root out the lies and plant fresh seeds of beauty – for them. And for me. 

Do you want to join me? I started out this blog with a search for joy - and I found it. I am going to continue my quest, and hunt for beauty. I’m going to record all the beauty I find in myself over the next month. It feels strange. It's uncomfortable shining the spotlight in our own direction. But for those of us raising daughters, for those of us doing battle with word wounds, for those of us who want to grow into the beauty that God has long since spoken over us – let’s go on a beauty hunt together. 

Write down beauty everywhere you find it in yourself - laundry folded in love, beds made, dinners cooked, a good hair day, freshly painted toes, a new outfit that makes us look like a hot mama, red high heels, the family legacy of freckles, dimples, and porcelain skin. Even the tired eyes from being up all night with sick kids.

Leave a comment, a link to your blog, send me a picture (and I'll post)... Let's behold the beauty He created. 

I thank you, High God-you're breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration-what a creation!. Psalm 139:14.