That's What Makes You Beautiful

      "How do you spell beautiful?"my little sister asks as she writes.
      Misha's the first to start, "b"
      Mom continues, "e-a" and goes back to reading our history lesson.
      I finish, "u-t-i-f-u-l."

     And once she had finished she had written in her capitalized, scraggly style the word, "beautiful."

     It reminded me of the time when she had cut the word, "love" out of paper and Mom said, "you made 'love'."

      What is beauty?

      What is love?

      Are the white pages filled with gray markings of an eight year old to form a story beautiful?
      Is the paper cut-out of "love" taped on my dresser drawer really love?

      Yes.

     Because we spelled out beautiful, and with a beautiful heart she wrote out the 'thank you' card. She shaped love and lovingly she taped it on my drawer for me to see every morning and every night.

     The magazine covers, the songs and the shows. The models in the stores, the way that this culture defines, "beautiful". That's not true beauty. It's a deception that has taken the cloak of beauty and wrapped it around itself.

      A grateful smile, the shining eyes, the kind heart, the helping hands and ready mind. That's beauty.
   
      The friend that trusts, the lover that honors, the child that depends and respects.

      They are beautiful.  They show love. They create love.

      And all of us, in pain and joy, in youth and age, are beautiful because God made us. And because He loves us, that's why we love, that's why we yearn for beauty. Because a beautiful God that loves us made beauty and love and we display beauty within love because love is beautiful.