You Are Beautiful, Day 18

(Today's post is a note I was given permission to use by my friend Patty, which she wrote after our Newman Center's women's retreat last October.)

Apparently, this week is "Love Your Body" week, immediately following the GW Newman Center's women's retreat- either a total coincidence or a sneaky plan by our campus minister. So, this weekend found me in a beach house in Delaware with several amazing women and my long-missed Atlantic Ocean. A picture can never do it justice, and neither can words, but a sunrise over the ocean is amazing. The sky is painted with color, the waves are crashing, the sun is blinding on the horizon, and after a clear night the only clouds hang low over the rising sun, illuminated by it. We're a loud group, I'll admit it, but the sunrise left us silent. There wasnt's a word any of us could add that would make the sight any more breathtaking than it already was.



These sights- a sunrise, a waterfall, the view from a mountaintop- are incredible. They leave us in awe, and we often feel so small next to the glory of creation. How can we ever compare? Really, though, the beauty we have as women is all that and more. Although next to something as beautiful as a sunrise or even just next to a model out of a magazine, we might feel less than perfect, there is nothing more beautiful than woman.

I've used this quote in a note before, and read it to more than a few of you, but it describes it perfectly: even though we might feel our beauty overshadowed by all kinds of other things, nothing can compare to it.

Nothing on earth can compare to the beauty of women. Such a statement may seem an exaggeration to some, but it is easy enough to prove: when was the last time you heard of someone who was addicted to looking at oline pictures of sunsets? Could you imagine if guys in your school chuckled in glee as they sent pictures of waterfalls and flamingoes to each other's cell phones? Despite how beautiful these other created things are, jsut the thought of comparing them to the allure of a woman is absurd.

(Jason Evert, Theology of His/Her Body)

So, in this week dedicated to it, and in every week, love your body. See your beauty, love your strangth. Love your heart, your soul, your infinite potential, love yourself.
You are more beautiful than a thousand sunsets. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:14)

You, reading this, are in the sunrise of your life- whether you are nine or ninety-two. Every day is another sunrise. Good things happen, and bad things happen, and the world turns, and the sun rises again. There is beauty in our strength: in every day we get up when we're just too tired, or we don't want to face the world, and just not having to wake up seems like the most comfortable option. Each one of these is a new beginning, another sunrise in our lives. We have an infinite capacity for new beginnings, for a fresh start and the creation of new life. Every single one is beautiful, more beautiful than a thousand sunsets, or sunrises.

"I am beautiful because I love," said an apparition of Mary at Medjugorie. As women, we are gifted with an endless power to love and give of ourselves. Love is beautiful. I count my mother and grandmothers among the most beautiful women I know, not just because they're pretty (although they are that) but because everything they do is done with a kindness, strength, and purpose of love that sets them apart.
Yes, sometimes we build up walls to keep out love, or fear bringing down walls we have up "for protection" and becoming vulnerable. If love is beauty, does this make us ugly, then? Never! Someimes, though, the walls we try to hide behind end up hiding out own beauty from us. No matter how tough you are, never forget to look at yourself and uncover your inner beauty.


Your beauty doesn't come from your waistline, your skin, or if your hair can stay smooth on a rainy day. It comes from your love, your strength, the sum of the small moments on your life that make you who you are. We're constantly bombarded with messages that we need to be just a little bit more this or a litle bit more that: thinner, curvier, thinner but curvier at the same time, tanner, taller, whatever. This is not what defines our beauty, or defines us. You're not the product of the things society judges you by, but the sum of all the small moments that we almost forget. You're the way the sun hits your face when you sit at your favorite thinking spot, the time your little brother said you're not thaaaat bad, the love God had for you on your birthday, and every day. You're the time you finished with a personal best in that race or nailed your choir solo after ages of practice. These are the things that make you beautiful: all the seemingly tiny things that show how you were made in the image and likeness of love.

So love.

Love youself, your heart, your soul, your body. Know that you are beautiful, more beautiful than any other thing on this earth. Love is beautiful, and we are beautiful when we love.

So love, beautiful.

Patty is a junior at George Washington University studying International Affairs in Washington D.C. She doesn't blog, but is a wonderful writer and maintains the tumblr for Made In His Image.