I Am Beautiful

My second resolution this year was to stop hating myself. Instead I would give myself mercy and forgiveness. I would celebrate my gifts and look for positives. When Laura at Catholic Cravings posted this fill-in-the-blanks poem I thought about it for a few days and decided to give it a shot.

I am beautiful.

I am beautiful because I am made in the image of God, who was a light that shined in the darkness. I am beautiful inside and out, for He didn’t just make my soul but my body too. All of me, body and soul, is His image. 

I am beautiful because my hair turns to gold in the sun, my eyes are like pools which delight in blues and greens: they are passionate and colorful as I am. 

And because I have a tan birthmark across my back.

I was beautiful when I painted with watercolors sitting at the picnic table on a bright warm day.

I am beautiful because my calves are too stocky to fit into boots and my hair can frizz in an instant.

I am beautiful like meadow in Colorado on a midsummer day.

I am beautiful when I smile.

I am beautiful when I receive Holy Communion and kneel before Jesus in Adoration. I am beautiful when I laugh and when I mourn, when I pray the O Blood and Water, whispering "I trust in You" to Him who is so beautiful. 

I am beautiful when I wear my striped maxi skirt and blue rose earrings.

I was beautiful even when I did not see it. Though I hid in my closet and cried over my thunder thighs, I was beautiful.

I am beautiful still.

I don’t know whether my eyes are doves behind my veil, or my hair like a flock of goats descending from Gilead. But in my own way, my own Rachel-way, I am beautiful. Perhaps, I am beautiful like mockingbird sitting on an ivy-laden or like a tiny star twinkling through the boughs of a swaying tree.

I am definitely not beautiful because I am perfect. I am not perfect, inwardly or outwardly. I have flaws enough.

But I am beautiful.

For I am loved by God, and love is in my heart, and where there is love:

there is beauty.