Beauty

Beautiful… how do you describe the word “beautiful”?  Over the last few days I have observed people making some pretty serious judgments on that very word.   Society has a pretty harsh standard that the world is suppose to live up to in order to be “beautiful”.  Perfect hair, perfect teeth, tall, slender, puffy lips, big breasts and the list goes on and on and on. And really, who came up with the standards of “perfect” anything!?

Growing up I wasn’t even considered attractive, let alone beautiful.  I had big ears, big teeth, was rail thin, with no breasts, long, straight dirty dish water blondish hair, and was a complete tom boy.  I grew up thinking that my ears being big was a bad thing, my teeth not aligned perfect or was a little on the large side wasn’t good and having little to no breasts was a complete curse!  It is a heavy burden to bare carrying around all this pressure to be “normal” or “beautiful” or whatever word you want to pin to it.   I didn’t lack in the friend department, but never really had a boyfriend so to speak.  I was like “one of the guys” and didn’t go to a dance in my entire middle school or high school life.   I know… awwww poor Pattie.   No, not really.  I didn’t have the desire to go because I didn’t know how to dance anyway!  :o)

After high school the ugly duckling started to turn into a somewhat swan.  I started to develop and started looking like a woman and not a string bean kid.  I truly wasn’t sure how to feel in this new body.  Boys started to notice me but always in the back of my mind I wasn’t sure if I was pretty enough or good enough for certain boys.  Puberty sucks!  End of story!

My mom always told me that beauty was within.  Oh,  who wants to hear that when an 18yr old girl doesn’t have a boyfriend.  NOT ME!  But as time went by, I totally got where she was coming from. It took the above scripture and a wonderful man to allow me to unfold into the woman I am today.  He stood by and listened when I would put myself down, and he would say,” you don’t look in the same mirror I do” or “you need to see what I see” and sweet things like that. This scripture is printed and put on my bedroom mirror where I put on makeup and do my hair.  A daily reminder that God finds me beautiful, Kraig finds me beautiful and I find myself beautiful.    I now know I don’t have to fit any world standard to find my own beauty within.  I just have to look deep inside me and see exactly what God sees and what Kraig sees and what my family and friends see.  I am beautiful, I am the best me in the world.