Define Beautiful: Beka

I will be honest – when Natalie emailed me to ask if I would write a post for this series, I had to email her back and ask for some time to think about it. Because, truthfully, I wasn’t really sure what made me feel beautiful.

I thought about it for a few days and then like nearly everything in life, I realized that I was over-thinking it. So then. Here we go.

I feel beautiful when I wear the strand of pearls that one of my board members gave me when I left a previous job. When she unclasped it from her neck, and put it around mine, I felt beautiful, special. Which leads me to believe that I feel beautiful when I feel noticed, appreciated.

I feel beautiful when I achieve something I didn’t think that I could do. A fundraising gala that seemed impossible to handle on my own, that I somehow managed to pull off – the glow I felt that night was one of confidence earned, of accomplishment. I felt beautiful.

I feel beautiful in a dress or skirt that swishes and spins when I walk. I feel beautiful when my heels are high. I feel beautiful when my husband tells me that I am. I feel beautiful when I wear a tight skirt or snug jeans, because the only curves on my body are my hips/butt and I love how curvy I feel when they’re highlighted.

I feel beautiful when I am laughing, even though I scrunch up my eyes when I laugh and it’s causing wrinkles between my eyebrows and creasing the corners of my eyes. I feel beautiful when I smile because even though my smile is crooked, the hole in my chin is more pronounced when I smile – and it is the one thing my great-grandpa passed down to me.

I feel beautiful when I have found the capacity to be loving towards someone who I don’t find lovable – or when I have sat with someone and cried with them and shared their pain. I feel beautiful in those moments because I know that in some tiny, unnoticeable, unimportant way, I am making the world a more beautiful place.

I feel beautiful on a rainy day when I’m curled up with a blanket and hot tea; on a snowy night when I’m settled in next to a fire with my book; on a sunny day when I feel radiant and alive. Because the same Maker of all those things is the One who made me. And while I know that He also made the duck-billed platypus, the snake and the rhinoceros, I choose to believe that He thought more of sunshine and snow and rain showers and the reflection of blue skies on lake waters when He made me.

Time changes all beauty. But “He makes all things beautiful in His time.” And that makes me feel beautiful.

- Beka

This gal is the go-to person who lifts me up when I’m all “I just want to quit life.” She’ll post a comment about how it really is hard to do the 8-5 operation, and I think, thank you. It is. She gets it, and I love her for it. And, she has great hair.

The Beautiful Project: More definitions of beautiful, posted on Thursdays. Send me your answer to “what makes you feel beautiful” to natalie at thebobbypin.com.