I'm finding that with age, beauty comes along with it. Not just because smile lines around my eyes mean that I've experienced joy, or sun spots that used to be considered freckles reflect sun kissed moments - what I mean is that with age, I am learning how to allow myself to truly embrace my beauty. The beauty that was there all along, but I allowed comparison, and "I'm not enough", and all the other lies to cast a shadow on--
that beauty--I can see it and I can feel it more than I could ten years ago. With age, I am better able to appreciate what it is that makes me uniquely me. Beauty comes with the years I add to my life, because with age I am more equipped able to ward off lies that try to tell me I'm not something. When really, I am something -- something beautiful.
Someone beautiful. Inside and out.
And you know what? It's taken time and a transforming of my heart to see it. But I'm finding that with getting older, and with a community of women who focus on true beauty (like
Natalie,
Anne,
Allie) rather than all the rest of superficial things that this world can focus so closely in on, that I'm welcoming age with open arms because wrinkled hands and a grey hair, to me, means a straighter aligning of my understanding of the beauty that is within. The beauty that really matters.
photo taken by Jenna, in Breckenridge after a Spring mountain adventure in which I felt truly alive and beautiful despite dirty hair and freezing hands
Beautiful. The struggle between beauty of the heart and that of our appearance can easily (and quickly) become distorted. It has taken me a long time to understand just how much our hearts are a true reflection of what real beauty is.
ReplyDeleteSO easily it can. I'm so glad that you have come to understand that beauty of the heart, and I feel encouraged to know that there are women like you out there guiding others to see the same in themselves as well !
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