1000 Strands

My friend,

I have to tell you that you are beautiful. I have to. It’s almost as strong a desire as the one to tell you that you are loved.

You are Beautiful.
You are Loved.

Your worth and the permission to move through the world freely come from these two things and they can never be taken away from you.

You have been beautiful from the day you were born. Glorious skin and eyes wrapped snuggly around a soul. Muscles learning to smile and grab. Neurons firing and a brain learning. A divine miracle.

 

You’ve never lost any of that glory. It’s with you now. It’s been with you through all the horribly awkward years of puberty and dawning sexuality. You never lost it. You were beautiful then and you are beautiful now.

Perception is everything, isn’t it?

For long enough, we have allowed the developing, immature tastes of teenage boys and girls to define for all of us what beauty in a human looks like. Do you see that we still do this? Free-flowing, unorganized hormones and cutthroat social hierarchies do not get the final word on who is beautiful.

It’s absurd to exclude any human from their place in creation as a miraculous, breathtaking beauty.

So, it is time to go back to the source. My friend, no matter what age you are…

“All beautiful you are my darling, there is no flaw in you.” Song of Songs 4:7

And why does beauty matter?

Because it does. Beauty has mattered since the beginning of creation. Beauty matters to us and to the One who creates it all.

Beauty has it’s own kind of meaning, doesn’t it?

Simply to have beauty is enough reason to exist. We love beautiful things. Beauty draws us in. We pursue it with passion, whether it is a sunset, a potential lover, a work of art, a dress, a mountain range, or a baby’s tiny hand. We want to “eat it up” “jump into it” “have it” “watch it” “own it”… we love and want beauty. Beauty is a reason unto itself.

This is why beauty is wrapped up in power and confusing power struggles. We notice people who are easily seen as attractive to other humans and we want the power they have because of it. Recognized beauty is power. We see that we do not have that same power in our physical appearance and we conclude that we are not beautiful.

Do not jump to conclusions. You are beautiful. If your kind of beauty is not getting you what you want from the world, I’m sorry. That’s too bad. It does not mean you are not beautiful. It means you want things that people are not giving you and you are blaming your face or your hair or your waistline.

When we falsely believe that we do not have beauty, we start telling ourselves that beauty doesn’t matter — at least not our own beauty. We opt out and pursue different kinds of power and meaning.

We can pursue power without beauty in it. We can deny our own beauty and say we will get our power without it, but we are denying a fundamental piece of ourselves.

The world and all the universe is profoundly beautiful. To exclude our own physical bodies from what we see as beautiful in this whole space is to lose a sense of our place in creation. To deny your own beauty is to deny yourself wholeness and shalom.

You can hike through the mountains and know you are just as beautiful as the trees.  You can swim in the ocean and know you are just as beautiful as the waves. 

 

You do not need to fight for a spot here. You do not need to discount beauty as shallow or not for you. You can accept your own beauty and then go kick ass in whatever way you want to, Darling.

Your beauty has not been given to you so you can get things. Your beauty is yours like the ocean is the Earth’s: to bring life and meaning and tie it all together.

Spending time trying to make yourself beautiful is like spending time trying to make the ocean wet. 

Take good care of you.

But stop trying to fix you.

You are good. Well-made. Beautiful.

“All beautiful you are, My Darling; there is no flaw in you.”

Beauty Manifesto:
Each human is beautiful regardless of age, race, gender, weight, or ability. This includes you and me too.