Beauty

I was taught well how to reject my reflection by my mother who had also been taught well.

It was generational.
And so very hard to escape. 

Beauty was always just five more pounds away, somewhere waiting in a department store, in the approval of others or
in the latest $100 anti-aging potions.

Satan's generational curse has long pulsed through my women and held our joy captive.

Comparison. Sizing up the competition.

Looking, listening, judging...beauty.

It has been one of my hardest obstacles.

Letting go of lies told and retold by the people that love me best and that I love best.
These women and their ideas that I was once so dependent on. 

But my women did not know that we are more precious than rubies,
that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that we become what we behold.

They could only see that they did not measure up and they were afraid...
because maybe I wouldn't either.
Rage builds, self-hatred boils and
life becomes dictated by fear in world that is never satisfied.

But beauty is everywhere.

More abundant than I ever knew.

It begs for acceptance. Even in the yuck.

Beauty cannot be compared, judged or shunned.

Because our Creator is perfect and He defines beauty perfectly.
In everyone and everything

But we must be willing to see differently.

Yes.
We must trust and see.

Him.
This is the new story.