beautiful:: part one.

I just got done walking with two of my oldest, dearest friends this morning. The kinds of friends who have heard me cry out multiple broken hearts, when quite honestly they could have been saying, “I told you so”. The kinds of friends who have seen me wear outfits I would never let my daughter walk out of the house in, but still walked the high school halls by my side. The kinds of friends who set up a senior prom date for me because I was so traumatized by my junior prom experience I refused to go. The kinds of friends who to this day bear my burdens and share my joys, encouraging me to grow as a child, wife, and mother in the Lord.

Besides being faithful, these women are beautiful. I’m talking walk-through-the-grocery-store-and-turn-heads beautiful; these women roll out of bed with hair I couldn’t get after two frustrated hours with the mirror and curling iron. Needless to say, these women have made more than a few guys and gals cast a covetous second glance in their direction over the years. And yet, talking to them, I realize, as so often is the case, that they are blind to this gift. As our conversation somehow turned to plastic surgery, their (and my own!) insecurities began to easily spill out in the open and I was saddened to hear their own perception of themselves.  I was shocked that they would even consider spending thousands of dollars to altar a body most women would give an arm and a leg for (or, perhaps more accurately, they would give a boob and a nose for).  Now, as a disclaimer, I hope its clear that this conversation was just as revealing to me about my own insecurities as it was about their own.  It made me realize that we are all searching for beauty.  And so often, we are deceived into looking in all the wrong places.

This caused me to probe deeper into our (and more directly, my own) quest for beauty.  What is it to be truly beautiful? A question so pertinent to the way I live and invest my life. As a wife, I am wired to want to offer beauty to my husband. As a mother now, I have a conviction to point my daughter toward a beauty greater than the world offers.  And of course, as a follower of Jesus, I believe I'm called to pursue an eternal beauty- a pursuit I'm often conflicted in as the world's voices drown out the Lord's. And so, I'm going to seek an answer to what defines beauty (though I realize I never will completely and eloquently be able to grasp or express it totally) over the next few posts... Wish me luck;)