When I was a little girl, I'll admit, I thought I was pretty. How could I not? My parents told me all the time. There is even a video tape from my brother's fifth birthday, and I am sitting on the highlighter yellow-green, plush 70's carpet in my parents' bedroom, helping him open his gifts and hold them up for the camera. I hadn't had a particularly good day at school that day, and I wasn't in the best of moods. But there was a moment in-between gifts, when my Daddy had the camera on me, and said, "Hey, Sissy. You're pretty, you know that?"
In that moment, everything else vanished, and for a split-second, no matter what else I had done wrong that day, I knew I was loved.
I wish that feeling had stayed with me-- that I was able to navigate my teen years, and college, and even certain points in my not-quite-as-young adulthood still feeling as beautiful as I had on May 4, 1990.
The thing about beauty though, is that it's not something someone else can convince us exists. Like Santa Claus. Or the Tooth Fairy.
Or even God. While not so much with the other two examples, i have faith that He is there, and i don't have to see Him to know it. I've made up my mind that He exists without seeing Him, and there's little you can do to change it.
Not so with beauty We have to see it for ourselves and in ourselves to believe that it's there. And even after we've seen it, if we don't believe in it, it's easy to forget what we saw. I've found, that for me, what someone else says about my beauty can work to my good or to my ill. It can warm and strengthen my confidence like my father's compliment so many years ago... or it can chew a parasitic hole of doubt into my self-image, just as many other not-so-complimentary remarks (and stares) have done since that day.
It has been hard for me to find beauty within myself, especially physical beauty. Beauty in my curved spine and slow gait. Beauty in my scarred abdomen, back, and feet. Beauty in my brain-injured stare (the one that sometimes comes across my face when I concentrate, or when I'm confused, or when I'm lost in absolutely no thought at all). Beauty in the way that I bend, contort, move. Beauty in the way that my left eye crinkles more when I smile. Or in the way that I laugh. Or even in the way that my mouth moves when I talk.
For a long time, none of those things looked beautiful to me. I was convinced that if my body didn't look beautiful to me, it couldn't look beautiful to anyone else either-- let alone a guy I was interested in dating. I had heard all my life (ad nauseum) that men were such visual creatures. If I couldn't give them the vision they would desire, I would have to find some way to compensate.
I convinced myself that if my body wasn't beautiful; I was going to make sure it could do beautiful things anyway. This led to a love for healthy eating, for exercise, and at some points in my life, to a promiscuity I am not proud of, but cannot run from.
As I've grown older I've realized that no amount of exercise, starvation, or sex can make anyone (least of all me) see my beauty. In fact, vices often hide beauty underneath a veil of self-pity and shame, making it invisible to even the most earnest of eyes.
My beauty may not lie in every single physical aspect of my body, but it lies in what those aspects represent. A premature birth. Months in hospital. Countless surgeries. Hours of pain. Struggle. Perseverance. Strength.
My body is a living testament to the presence of a loving, living God, who gave me no more on this Earth than I could handle. Who wanted me to live.
Who was willing to give me opportunity, a loving family, and a (somewhat hardened) strong will to take my physical body and to use the soul within it to push myself as far as I could go. And for His benefit.
My body itself may not be meant for a magazine cover, but it does tell a story. And to me, the story it tells is beautiful.
So the guy that i meet for coffee on Friday may stare. He may gawk. He may not have the best impression of my physical beauty, no matter how I wear my hair, or what dress I choose, or whether I make it out of the house with eyeliner.
He can choose to see me skin-deep. Or he can look deeper.
But I know, no matter what he thinks, that I'm beautiful. Why?
Because this body I'm using-- this broken, scarred, imperfect body, ultimately belongs to God.
And who am I to call anything He's given me anything less than gorgeous?
I wish that feeling had stayed with me-- that I was able to navigate my teen years, and college, and even certain points in my not-quite-as-young adulthood still feeling as beautiful as I had on May 4, 1990.
The thing about beauty though, is that it's not something someone else can convince us exists. Like Santa Claus. Or the Tooth Fairy.
Or even God. While not so much with the other two examples, i have faith that He is there, and i don't have to see Him to know it. I've made up my mind that He exists without seeing Him, and there's little you can do to change it.
Not so with beauty We have to see it for ourselves and in ourselves to believe that it's there. And even after we've seen it, if we don't believe in it, it's easy to forget what we saw. I've found, that for me, what someone else says about my beauty can work to my good or to my ill. It can warm and strengthen my confidence like my father's compliment so many years ago... or it can chew a parasitic hole of doubt into my self-image, just as many other not-so-complimentary remarks (and stares) have done since that day.
It has been hard for me to find beauty within myself, especially physical beauty. Beauty in my curved spine and slow gait. Beauty in my scarred abdomen, back, and feet. Beauty in my brain-injured stare (the one that sometimes comes across my face when I concentrate, or when I'm confused, or when I'm lost in absolutely no thought at all). Beauty in the way that I bend, contort, move. Beauty in the way that my left eye crinkles more when I smile. Or in the way that I laugh. Or even in the way that my mouth moves when I talk.
For a long time, none of those things looked beautiful to me. I was convinced that if my body didn't look beautiful to me, it couldn't look beautiful to anyone else either-- let alone a guy I was interested in dating. I had heard all my life (ad nauseum) that men were such visual creatures. If I couldn't give them the vision they would desire, I would have to find some way to compensate.
I convinced myself that if my body wasn't beautiful; I was going to make sure it could do beautiful things anyway. This led to a love for healthy eating, for exercise, and at some points in my life, to a promiscuity I am not proud of, but cannot run from.
As I've grown older I've realized that no amount of exercise, starvation, or sex can make anyone (least of all me) see my beauty. In fact, vices often hide beauty underneath a veil of self-pity and shame, making it invisible to even the most earnest of eyes.
My beauty may not lie in every single physical aspect of my body, but it lies in what those aspects represent. A premature birth. Months in hospital. Countless surgeries. Hours of pain. Struggle. Perseverance. Strength.
My body is a living testament to the presence of a loving, living God, who gave me no more on this Earth than I could handle. Who wanted me to live.
Who was willing to give me opportunity, a loving family, and a (somewhat hardened) strong will to take my physical body and to use the soul within it to push myself as far as I could go. And for His benefit.
My body itself may not be meant for a magazine cover, but it does tell a story. And to me, the story it tells is beautiful.
So the guy that i meet for coffee on Friday may stare. He may gawk. He may not have the best impression of my physical beauty, no matter how I wear my hair, or what dress I choose, or whether I make it out of the house with eyeliner.
He can choose to see me skin-deep. Or he can look deeper.
But I know, no matter what he thinks, that I'm beautiful. Why?
Because this body I'm using-- this broken, scarred, imperfect body, ultimately belongs to God.
And who am I to call anything He's given me anything less than gorgeous?
