You Are Beautiful

I really truly believe that everyone is beautiful.  Is everyone model status?  Is everyone movie star status?  Absolutely not.  But (yes I am starting a sentence with a preposition) I believe everyone has something beautiful.  Your eyes, your heart, oh and guess what your soul.

The other day someone I know on Facebook made a post that said something along the lines of, "I am sitting at the doctor's office.  A woman is staring at me.  I don't think she has ever seen a fat person before".  I replied to her comment and said, "I am sure it is because she thinks you are beautiful".  Her first response to me disturbed me.  It was something like, "I don't think so".    So I put on my positive lecture hat and said,  "Friend (name omitted) we need to work on your attitude so that you know you absolutely are beautiful!"  Her response troubled me even more, "No thanks Lori, I don't want to be delusional".  She made a couple of other negative comments to other posters as well.

There were so many emotions that ran through me.  First I was incredulous, then I was actually wounded.  Here I am trying to do something nice for someone and they don't appreciate it.  Seriously, that went through my head.  I ripped off a very mature, "Well, OK then.  Nevermind".  I left that there for about 30 seconds and then went and deleted all my comments on the thread.

I was stunned by many things.

1. I was incredibly sad that someone was that down on themselves
2. I was a little incredulous that no one had taught her how to take a compliment (a pet peeve of mine)
3. I started to analyze why I had posted the original comment.

I will come back to number 2 some day in another post.

Let's look at number 3 for a minute.  Why did I post that comment?  Was it to make her feel better?  Was it to make me feel like a hero?  I started to feel like I wasn't doing it for the right reasons?  Did I want her to say, "Why thank you Lori, you are so sweet!".  Why did I get so angry at her comment?  What was my goal?

I actually thought about this for a long time.  As I said at the beginning, I truly believe everyone is beautiful.  God made us in his image.  Is God beautiful?  If we are made in God's image don't we all HAVE to be beautiful?  At least I believe everyone starts with the same potential to be beautiful.  I am not talking about physical beauty.  What I do KNOW is God loves all of us. I know he thinks we are all beautiful.  We all have a purpose in life if we are willing to listen to God to learn and understand what he wants for us and of us.  

I was happy to come to the realization that I didn't make that comment for myself.  I really thought a compliment might make her feel a little better about herself.

I also really do believe she is beautiful. She is a musician and plays beautiful music - just that - by itself - makes her beautiful to me.  She is using a gift that God gave her to create a thing of beauty.   Society today tends to focus on the media, movie-star, model "image" of beauty.  But that is about making money, period.  Beauty is so much more to me.

Merriam- Websters definition of beauty.   Hello - that sure says to me that you can find beauty in many things!

Full Definition of BEAUTY

1

:  the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit :  loveliness

2

:  a beautiful person or thing; especially :  a beautiful woman

3

:  a particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality

4

:  a brilliant, extreme, or egregious example or instance <that mistake was a beauty>

YOU ARE 

BEAUTIFUL  

P.S.  I went back to her page to look at the exact wording of her/my comments.  The thread is gone.  Maybe I got through just a tiny bit?