Beautyful

There's been a blog post circulating recently about being called beautiful. I get what they're saying. The world focuses on external beauty, placing greater value on it than our inner gifts and abilities. I totally agree. I even agree when the post said that the word has lost its true meaning.

But there was one thing I didn't agree with. It said that not everyone is beautiful--that some people are homely, plain, or even down-right ugly.

Not cool, blogger man (or woman. I never bothered to see who actually wrote it.)

I guess we've all seen people we may not find attractive, but attractiveness is different than beauty. The difference goes a bit deeper than pure semantics. Being attractive means that there is something about someone that another person is attracted to. We often say someone is beautiful when we mean they are attractive- something about their physical make-up attracts us. Even if the attraction is purely platonic and not sexual at all, it is still an attraction of sort. We are drawn to that person, they're appearance is pleasing to us. They are attractive not because of who they are, but because of who we are--because we are attracted to something about them.

Beauty is different. Beauty doesn't depend on someone else. Beauty is innate, it is divine. Beauty is in the divinity of who we are and where we came from, how we were created and who created us. Beauty is in the breaths we take, the hope in our eyes, the smile on our lips. Beauty needs no admirer or validation--it simply is.

And we simply are . . . beautiful. All of us.

I will never tell my child they are not beautiful simply because someone doesn't find them attractive. Of course I will teach them they have value and worth, talents and abilities. But, I will also teach them they are beautiful, because they are.

Beauty isn't skin deep. It is soul deep. We aren't beautiful because of what we look like, but because of who we are. We are filled with the beauty of life, love, hope, kindness, giving, laughter, and joy. There is even beauty in our sorrow and sadness, in our longing for peace--for in those moments we are humble and searching for truth and purpose. There is so much beauty in us that perhaps we should stop calling people beautiful and staring saying what we were are: beautyful.

Because we are. I am beautyful. You are beautyful.

And that is simply beautiful.