Friday, August 7, 2015

Finding Beautiful

Every girl wants to feel beautiful. It's a part of who we are, a piece that is built into us, an insatiable desire to feel beautiful. loved. appreciated. unique. 

Girls feel beautiful when handsome men tell them that they are. They feel beautiful when they are in sexy dresses with expensive jewelry and lots of makeup. Perfectly manicured nails and curled hair. They feel beautiful when they travel to far off places and go to fancy parties. 

Or at least, that's what the world wants us to think that beauty is. 

But beauty is a little more tender than sexy dresses and handsome men and far off places. 
Beauty is something that has to be found, not created. 

It's in the moments you are doing what you love. It's in the moments that are small, but victorious.

For me, it's in the moments that I am sweaty and gross and completely unattractive, after running 3 miles.
It's coming home from a hike or a camping trip, with tangled, frizzy hair, covered in dirt, and smelling like sweat and smoke.
It's when I am surrounded by happy people, doing absolutely nothing, nowhere important.
When I am laughing.
When I am working.
When I am serving.
Loving. Helping. Getting dirty.

The moments that am particularly the quite opposite of glamorous, in very plain places, are when I find beauty. When I am in nature. When I am doing something I love. When I feel accomplished.

We don't say that a landscape isn't beautiful or complete because it doesn't have trees. Or because there is no ocean.
We don't curse the blue of the sky because it isn't always the orange and maroon colors of sunset.
We don't tell the peacock that it isn't majestic, because it isn't a lion. Or the lion that it is too ferocious and needs to be more like the mouse.

Beauty isn't something that we can fabricate. It's something that happens. True, inner beauty, is more attractive than any far off adventure or expensive fairytale. It's something here. Something now. Something so unique and perfect that only you can find it for yourself. No one can give it to you, and no one can take it away. So work for it. Keep it. Treasure it.

Make beauty yours.