Blogrimage Day 3

What is beauty? How do we define it? WHY do we define it? What is it about the human condition that we find one person attractive over the other? If we’re all created by God in his image and are supposed perfections of that nature, then why do we find one person attractive and another the complete opposite (you know its true whether you’re willing to admit it or not). Beauty is so much more than a physical reality or a visual existence … in the end it goes deeper than skin, deeper than what the eyes alone can see.

This blog has been inspired by conversations with people around me, both currently as well as from years ago. It comes out of questions of my current state of life and things that I currently question and wonder about. It is inspired out of my own insecurities and life questions. But it is dedicated to truth and beauty. I could choose to focus on all that appears negative or look for a new perspective, a new understanding. I could choose to find death or life within these quandries.

Somewhere within this blogrimage it was going to become inevitable that I wind up discussing ACTUAL beauty – at its basic, most simplistic, visual level. I hadn’t intended upon getting into it quite this early, so I’m just going to skirt around the REAL issue for now, but begin to touch on this delicate topic. Today’s “blogisode” (blog episode?) is inspired by and comes out of a recent conversation with some good friends.

We were sitting talking late into the night about different issues and questions in our lives, when suddenly we landed on a conversation of relationships – the male/female kind. I won’t describe the entirety of the conversation (that’s for a different blog entirely, focusing on identity) but within this conversation something struck me. We were discussing the way guys typically enter into relationships and what my friend was describing would make MOST of my female friends very angry and frustrated, but I suddenly saw a glimpse of something different. What he described, on the surface level, was very frustrating. It’s common knowledge that guys are generally attracted to women first on a physical level, Christian or non-Christian. Especially for an insecure individual, the knowledge that guys are first attracted to a girl physically is very daunting and rather disheartening even. But what even I saw as frustrating in the past (being one of the many women in the world who are NOT absolutely gorgeous by physical standards) I suddenly saw through different eyes. I could discuss many different aspects of beauty in relation to our conversation but there was one thing that particularly stood out to me: something I saw as amazing. We were men and women of God, sitting discussing things of the heart and recognizing the differences between men and women. I feel like we’re so often afraid of how guys view women and even how women view guys that we don’t stop to recognize the differences and the potential that God has a PLAN in that . . . I suddenly saw something beautiful. Why are we so quick to be afraid of differences and allow them to raise up insecurities? Why don’t we look at the potential in those differences and be strengthened by the design in them rather than distracted by what it could mean in a negative manner?

I see it like a dance – a beautiful waltz of two different souls, two different individuals, two different stories and experiences: let them come together, and a miracle happens. Have you ever seen two girls dance together? It kind of works, but it’s more awkward than anything. Put a man and woman together and beauty radiates. That’s what I suddenly got out of our conversation. As humans, we run from differences and innately feel challenged by them, but is this part of His design? I don't think so. I love that men and women are different, that we view each other differently and are attracted to each other differently. You can choose to see the negative in this, or the beauty and the incredible dance that is created between these two entities, these two delicate balances. Just as in a dance, if one controls more than another, there’s an imbalance that disrupts the beauty. But bring balance, bring “give and take,” bring DIFFERENCE and it’s breathtakingly beautiful.

"For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it." -Ivan Panin