I'm not beautiful. There ... I've said it. I am not, nor have I ever been, beautiful. I don't think I'm ugly ... I've been told I'm kind of cute for a 50-something gray-haired gal, especially when I'm wearing suspenders, Converse shoes and a bow tie. I'm cute, but I'm not beautiful. I have friends, both male and female friends, who are truly beautiful ... I'm not talking pretty ... I'm talking they could be on the cover of a magazine beautiful. And there have been times in my life when I would have given everything I owned to be beautiful ... times when I truly believed that if I were just beautiful, that would fix me and make all my problems disappear. I'm older and a little wiser now, and I've come to understand that what my old dad told me so many years ago really was true. When I was complaining or whining about not being beautiful, Daddy would always say, "Being beautiful on the outside ain't what's important, Sam ... it's being beautiful right here that counts, being beautiful in your heart is what matters most of all."
Over the last few days, I've been thinking a lot about beauty ... what it is, what it means, what it looks like. Several random encounters with people I barely know have caused me to recall Daddy's words about the importance of inward beauty rather than outward beauty. And today, I came to a conclusion ... my dad was right ... it really is the beauty of a person's heart that matters most of all. And the more I pondered the truth about heart beauty vs. physical beauty, the more I thought about the events of recent days and the people within those events. And the more I've thought about those particular people and the beauty they radiate, the more I thought about just who the beautiful people really are and what they truly look like. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I know more than just a few incredibly beautiful people ... people whose hearts glow with the beauty of unconditional love and compassion and kindness and forgiveness and loyalty and commitment and dedication and understanding and truth.
As I drove home from work this evening, I couldn't help but think about how badly I used to want to be beautiful and about how I thought I was past those days. The truth is ... I still want to be beautiful. I want to look in the mirror and see a beautiful me looking back ... a beautiful heart me looking back. I do want to beautiful ... I want to be one of the beautiful people ... I want to be one of the most beautiful people. I want to be one of the beautiful people ... on the inside ... where it matters most of all.
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