On Beauty.

I'm one to say I'm learning.

I'm a teacher, and I feel like I learn more than anything.

Every day there is something new, something different, something that makes me want to scream from my "please-hold-my-hand-I'm-scared," little corner of the fearful ones of the world. Because too many days these days, I'm learning more than anything.

I look in the mirror too much. I doubt too much. I care too much. I fear too much. I think too much. I hold on too much.

There are a lot of "things" that I do just a little too much of in the eyes of others.

And that's where everything I have believed for so long has collapsed before my eyes. I have cared for too many years, for too many hours, for too many minutes, for too many seconds what other people would say. "If I did this, or wow, if I did that...What would they think? Then what would happen? How would I be perceived? How would they feel?" And there is a pain that comes with this process. There is a pain that comes with this lifestyle.

The pain of pleasing becomes a life of appeasing. And what did I learn to do?

"Smile, honey. It's just fine." Oh, the lines I learned. The script I created for my own utopia was one of elegant luster to my own, blind eyes.

But, oh dear...Did I get lost on a road of smiles that weren't real, lumps in the throat that weren't swallowed and words that weren't said.

And somewhere in the mix of the last 10 years of this blender, I created a smoothie of a fruitful mess.




Have you ever held sand in your hands and let the wind pass through?

Each grain is ransomed by the song of the wind and you watch the line of grains float away infinitely to the dusts of life.

Those teeny pieces of existence are what signify my ability to control.

However, the sunset that shoreline of sand creates underneath the orange of invitation? He sings me promises of True beauty.  He writes me poems of romance. He paints a canvas of promise to the faithless heart of the horizon that brings revival of soul, redemption of heart and a requisition to respond to the extended hand that He keeps open for me. But dear friend, the same is offered to you.

If you're like me, you're a little tired, a little confused, but you know there is more than this. 

My friend says it best to the weary, to the questioning, to the one who just needs to be reminded:

There are years that ask questions and years that answer." -Zora Neale Hurston

Take heart, troubled one, everyone has a suitcase of something that doesn't seem like it will fit on the plane, but look at the label and yours is similar. You'll both make it, cargo and all.

Look beyond the bags the people are carrying. Let's look into the eyes.

Beauty is at her finest.

-S