When my daughter was young, we visited a women’s monastery where a nun was tending to the chickens. By all cultural standards, the young woman was not pretty. Her face was acne-scattered and scarred, and she had thick glasses and braces. Her dark eyebrows formed a solid line, giving the appearance of a heavy, furrowed unibrow.
Welcoming us, she warmly invited my daughter to help feed the chickens. Rylee immediately took to her, and they passed the time, chatting and laughing like old friends. After finishing, my daughter and I walked down the dirt road back to our room, and she offhandedly remarked, “I hope someday I can be as pretty as that nun.”
Her statement stopped me dead in my tracks and highlighted my embarrassingly blaring inability to recognize true beauty.
I’ve thought about beauty a lot since that moment—not the Victoria’s Secret/Hollywood type of beauty or even the glowing sunset kind. I’ve been mulling over the idea of true beauty—soul beauty.
One of my lifelong friends recently survived a bout with Leukemia. After losing her hair and struggling through chemo and radiation, her hair eventually began growing back. Naturally, she was self-conscious, but one night, while bathing with her daughter, the little girl petted my friend’s head and offhandedly commented how much she loved her mommy’s cute, tiny baby hairs.
Those little stubbles of hair peeking out from a bald scalp were beautiful; they just required someone with keen eyesight to notice.
I have another friend who, while walking toward an elevator, got stuck behind a slow-moving mother and her special-needs child. The child walked abnormally—clapping with each shuffled step—and the mother rushed to move her child along so people could pass. She remorsefully turned to glance back at my friend, but before she could offer her apology, my friend enthusiastically exclaimed, “Look at your beautiful child! He’s clapping in perfect rhythm to his steps!” The shocked mother admitted that this was indeed what he was doing.
A child clapping to his shuffled rhythm was beautiful. A mother trying to be sensitive not only to her child but also to those around her was beautiful. Both required someone with proper eyesight to notice.
American culture is obsessed with “fixing” anything deemed “ugly”—make-up and a wax job for the scarred, hairy nun, a concealing wig for my cancer-riddled friend, therapy to heal the child’s irregular gait—thereby allegedly beautifying each broken person, every abhorrent scenario. But in succumbing to this mentality, we dictate the acceptable standards of beauty, thereby losing sight of actual God-given beauty.
True beauty is magnetic. Those who walk about with closed heart-eyes will judge and recoil at the sight. But for those with eyes wide open, authentic beauty lures, attracts, and connects people at the level of the soul.
I know I plod through life half-blind. I lament how much of my soul is uncultivated, maimed, and even hideous.
But to sharpen my eyesight, I must first begin by focusing on my own inner beauty. I must attempt to nourish the good within rather than dwelling on all that is lacking. And like a novice photographer sharpening her eye for what comprises a good photograph, perhaps my vision will become clearer, less muddled by the confines of society, more grounded in spiritual realities, and freer to recognize true beauty.
