Beauty

I was just leading a women's retreat a couple weekends ago and have to share this brief experience from one of my sessions that continues to resonate. I think all women can understand that there are times when we do not feel beautiful. It's easy, unfortunately, not to feel attractive and to feel most days like your body simply does not adequately compare to what you perceive as beautiful. We talked a lot about beauty on this retreat and as is usually the case the topic seemed particularly difficult for the women when they were asked to talk about their own beauty. It was easy for them to talk about their kids, friends, sisters, moms, or the proverbial "other women" who are beautiful but opening up about their own experiences feeling beautiful seemed almost too difficult..

One woman, however, spoke so frankly about feeling beautiful I still find myself referencing her story a couple weeks later and smiling. I had asked the group of roughly eighty women to recall a time when they remembered feeling beautiful. A few women mentioned their wedding days, others talked about giving birth to their children, then one woman said clearly, "Yesterday." We all turned and looked to her. She repeated, "Yesterday. Yesterday I woke up later than my husband and as I was getting dressed he walked in with a cup of coffee. I was standing in the room, completely naked and he walked right up to me, wrapped me in his arms and said, 'You are so beautiful.' So I felt beautiful yesterday." I found out later that they were high-school sweethearts who had been married over forty years.