It's not pretty, really!

Good news about my Dad. After many tests, pokes, and prods, he is fine. With some minor instructions about watching cholesterol and weight, he has recovered at home this past week and will begin work on Monday! I’m so thankful for the good report. I’m so thankful we are not journeying down another path.

Speaking of weight, I just have to say something about what happened this week. OK, for the sake of a good story, I will subject myself to humiliation. Be prepared for what lies ahead.

I am a simpleton. I do wear makeup (it would be too cruel a joke to play on the rest of humanity if I didn’t) but not anything extreme. I wear simple lip shimmer, my favorite being Burt’s Bee’s lip shimmer (Rhubarb) which, alas, I am out of and cannot purchase here (giant hint!). However, the other day I was feeling, in a word, ugly. The weather was gray which seemed to match my face. I felt I needed some color. So, taking a risk, I chose colored lip stick that my Mother-in-love Shirley gave me over the summer, and I might add, said looked beautiful on me.

Thus, the story develops. Libby was at a friends’ house. Too bad it wasn’t an Austrian friend’s house, for perhaps they would not have understood her English well enough to know the deep scars she unknowingly inflicted on my vanity. It had been a long day. However, wearing my colored lipstick and feeling “pretty” I ever so confidently walked into these fellow Americans' house to retreive my beloved youngest child. Libby, being the outspoken, quick-to-say-what-she-thinks kind of girl, proceeds to say, “Wow Mom! Where’d you get those lips?” I slinked out of their house and haven’t been back since.

If that wasn’t enough, this past week Libby let another precious word bomb drop on my vanity. Praise God it was just in front of the Elledge 5, but a bomb none-the-less. As many of you know, I have to take medication for anxiety. The meds keep me “normal” (no comments please) but have one little draw back – weight gain. I deal with it, don’t like it, but there you have it. One night at dinner while it was just us girls (Addison, Parker, Libby and myself) I felt like sharing my struggle and feelings about the weight as a way to try to show them beauty isn’t what the media pushes but what lies within. I told them I felt that God wanted me to exercise and even though I didn’t really want to, I wanted to be healthy and obedient to God. However, again, I wanted to communicate being “pretty” comes from within … from the heart. So, I made a comment that even though I was chubby, I wanted to be beautiful to God.

Several days later, as we were preparing for dinner. The girls were putting homework away, there was hustle and bustle and I flippantly told Chris I had exercised that day. Libby, out of the depths of her heart says to me … “Mom, it’s ok that you are chubby. We have all just gotten used to it.” Gulp. Gasp. Enough said.

So, what’s the point of this blog? True beauty and confidence comes from within … from a place God grows. I gotta go … apply more lipstick and exercise some more!