Pretty is as Pretty does.......

I cut my hair. Something I swore I'd never do.  Not just because Donnie hates short hair, but mainly because I always thought my hair was my beauty.  Silly.  I know it sounds absurd, but there was a time when I wouldn't even wear my hair in a ponytail for fear that it would expose so much of my face, which I so deeply felt wasn't good enough.  I thought only girls who had gorgeous faces could afford to wear their hair up.  Not average girls like myself.  No, girls like me had to deflect from their "averageness" by having long flowing hair.

I'm not sure at what point in life I decided to embrace what God created in me.  The beauty that glows so brightly now when I look in the mirror, is vastly different that what I once saw.  The face looking back at me now is so much more confident and glorious than the one that stared back at me in my twenties.  I could speculate I suppose.  The reality of having beautiful friends who were equally discouraged about their appearance.  Finding out that the popular, most beautiful girls had all the same inhibitions about their bodies and physical appearance that I had.  Discovering that people whom I found to be the most beautiful were the very people whom others found so very unattractive.

At what point did we as women decide we weren't good enough for the rest of the world?  When did we become so vain?  When I was a little girl I never once looked at myself and thought so negatively of my appearance.  I never thought, my nose was too big, my ears not proportionate, or pirouetted to scrutinize my thighs.  I never wished I was smarter, stronger, thinner, prettier.  There must have been some point in life when it all changed.  Some point when I became engrossed with my appearance to the rest of humanity and let myself obsess about my body, my freckles, my round face, short legs, chubby tummy, and big arms.  Yes, I'm certain that if I could go back in life and change one thing it would that one day when I stood at that mirror facing all my imperfections and the moment when I told myself I didn't measure up.

How many wasted moments in time have we spent as women worrying about "not being good enough"?

I believe life is a slow process of constantly trying to reinvent ourselves as women.  Its a never ending maze, once we get one thing right, we allow ourselves to see one more thing we missed.  The cycle to measure up is endless.  I am not quite sure at what point I decided I would overcome this obstacle and embrace what God created in me, but there was definitely a moment in time when I decided to allow Him to turn the tide in my life.  I refuse to be put in a box.  I won't allow myself to fence me in.  The possibilities of this fantastic life are endless, and I won't allow the rest of the world to shape me into something I am not.  Into its idea of beauty.

So, I cut my hair off.  Partly because I was curious what it would feel like as I've never once had short hair...but mostly because I wanted to prove to myself that I am beautiful without it.  Sometimes that's what it takes, drastic measures in life to prove to ourselves as women that what God created in us is far more beautiful than what the world or our warped senses of reality could ever endeavor.  Each of us are beautiful creations.  Pleasing to the sight of the only one who truly matters, our magnificent creator.  The one who sees past the cellulite, past the bad skin, the big thighs, the blemish we work so hard to hide, the one who sees straight through to what the rest of the world gets mere glimpses of.  Reality is who we are when we stand alone facing a mirror, when no one else is around to impress, when there is just You, and.....You.  The moment in time when you have no one but yourself and who He created within you.  Find that.  Embrace that.  Then let the rest of the world see it too. 

Then, and only then will you be truly Beautiful.