If you are a woman, you are beautiful. There is not a woman alive who does not carry the stunning beauty, a unique reflection of God.
But there are many who have tried to skirt around this, avoid it, deny it, destroy it even.
Who has tried to destroy your beauty?
Others maybe. Yourself perhaps. Most likely both.
If it is true that God created woman as the epitome of creation, that last final stunning brush stroke upon this rich canvas we call the universe, then I suspect we will one day answer for our treatment of woman and of her beauty.
To some we may be confronted with, “For what reason have you run from your beauty?”
To others, “Why have you used your beauty as a cheap weapon against men?”
To still more, “When did you decide to hide?”
Beauty is a gift that we have turned into a torment. It has been twisted and maligned and feared and destroyed and flaunted and smeared and run to and run from.
What we have not understood is that the beauty of woman belongs to none.
Men do not own your beauty. Memorize this. Live this.
You do not own your beauty. Take this to heart.
You, like everything else gifted to us at the beginning of time, are a steward of your beauty. It is yours to the extent that you care and nurture and respect and share and live in simple, stately, elegant manner.
Cease to care for it and it will leave you, take on its care and it will return to you.
You need not be fancy but strong.
You need not be plain but shining.
You need not be brash but intentional.
You need not to hide but to be present.
Beauty is the reflection of your inner being. What you believe about yourself shows. If you try to hide behind all the ugly you can muster, you have not hidden at all, the world can see just what you think of yourself.
We want more for you.
For we love you.
Those lies that came against you, that said your beauty is all you have, today we say to you, “There is more, so much more to you than your beauty. Your face is not who you are. Your body is not who you are. Your hair is not who you are. Live all of who you are.”
To those who agreed to lies that said your beauty put you in danger, today we say, “Remove from the hand of trauma your beauty. Do not allow your beauty to be held captive. Choose a new agreement, declare a new beginning, take back your beauty as the gift it was always meant to be. Live beyond destruction. Live in your beauty.”
For you who have used beauty to control and have the upper hand with men we say, “Put down your beauty as a weapon. It will not serve you this way, not for the long term plan. Made into a weapon beauty will slip away, quietly and unnoticed, but surely gone one day. Do not any longer misuse your beauty. Choose honour and your beauty will shine bright.”
To those who heard or took on or somehow came to believe that your beauty makes you dangerous, to the ones shamed for their beauty, we say, “Poppycock! It is the evil in men’s (and women’s) hearts that rise up to destroy and shame and make evil your beauty gifted to you by God. Do not live ashamed and hiding. Do not live less-than or in some ultra-pious falsehood. Be beautiful. Without apology.”
Every woman must make peace with her beauty. This takes some years. For all of the reasons and lies and confounding listed above. The road is often long.
But it is a road worth travelling.
Cyndy Lavoie 