Broken Up Stream of Consciousness

Why is it so easy to find beauty in every single other woman but yourself?

I was analyzing this the other day, looking around the room full of ladies (not in the comparison-type way of looking, although I do have days where that is a reality). I paused for a moment on each and every individual, and in each girl I found genuine beauty. Now, there were girls who obviously had their hair done that day and it looked super cute, or someone did their make-up job extremely well that morning…things such as that (more societally beautiful)…but in every girl, make-upped or not, there was something…a glow, perhaps.

Glow connotes happiness and charm, not the diction I’m searching for…because even the broken ones, the ones who haven’t felt ‘glowing’ for years…the guarded and hidden ones…it was something in their spirit (a divine touch?).

This type of beauty you could not compare. I could not say one girl had it more than another. Everybody had it all the same, although in each girl it was completely unique and altogether different.

(I wish I could take you into my head and into that moment so you could see for yourself what I mean without me having to attempt to describe it for you).

I looked at one girl. “She’s beautiful,” I thought. I looked at the next girl, “She’s beautiful,” I thought. And so continued around the room.

It occurred to me that maybe if I was able to step outside of my body and see myself across the room or from afar, to observe myself like I had done the others, I’d find it in myself too. Maybe we can’t see it when we stand two feet in front of a mirror nit-picking every little detail! But maybe if we took a step back we’d look at ourselves and think, “She’s beautiful,” too.

It’s such a burden to be a woman. Every day is different – a different emotion towards your body, your beauty, and what you have to offer the world. Some days you just rock it. Other days you hope you survive the entire day dodging every other person alive. Most of the time it’s probably somewhere in the middle. There’s pressure coming at us from all sides—to be enough, to look enough, to feel enough.

I think the problem is both that we let Satan get at us all the time, and that we simply care too much. There is so much freedom in accepting that God gave women beauty, and that you have it. No hiding. No pressure. No doubt. No cover-ups. Just be.

I guess I write such things for two reasons.

One. Know that you are beautiful. You are absolutely beautiful, and everyone around you does see it (even when you don’t…even if you never seem to). This is not the surface, “Oh, everyone’s beautiful in their own way, (even the plain ones)!” type of cliché. I genuinely saw, felt even, a powerful beauty.

Two. What an honor it is to be ‘woman.’ What a label! We get to demonstrate the beauty of God, the beauty of the creator of the universe, every day! It’s actually quite the responsibility, which is probably why it often feels like a burden. But all we have to do…is be!

I haven’t read the book Captivating for a good number of years now, but I always remember the chapter that talks about how Eve (woman) was the crown of creation. In taking the Bible’s creation passage literally (suppress the hot topic debate with me for a moment), God continues to create and create, and it grows and grows into this beautiful creation, and we, ladies, are the climax!

Beauty is the essence of a woman. Beauty is the essence of God.




Oh, P.S. I feel really sorry for all the boys in this world for whom it is not socially acceptable to wear skirts every nice warm day. Poor fella’s are all missing out.