Beauty is...

Since the day Sarah was born, she has had hundreds, probably thousands of compliments on how beautiful she is. I have been stopped in grocery stores, parks, malls, church, airports, and every other public place you can think of for people to tell me just how beautiful she is.

It used to bother me. I didn't want my beautiful daughter to grow up thinking that the only thing she had to offer was her outer beauty. So I always down played it. And I tried to shield her from it.

Until one day my grandparents commented yet again on how beautiful she was. She must have been around 4. I made my usual comment- "Ya, she is very smart." But here my grandfather insisted, "But she is very beautiful as well."

And that changed my mind. I decided it was ok for her to be both (as if it wasn't ok to be both before...)

Sarah is now 11. She is still absolutely beautiful. So many children go through kind of an ugly duckling stage around her age. She is still beautiful. She has very dark hair, pale skin, and beautiful blue-green eyes. She is petite- shorter and smaller than her 3rd grade brother. And she is just a beautiful girl.

This brings me to the point of this post. Yesterday her two friends came over- one of them in the ugly duckling stage, the other quite pretty. They told Sarah that her eyebrows look weird and she should do something about it. Later she used a razor blade to try to shape one of them.

Ya, that didn't work. When she came down in tears over what she had done, my first feeling was anger. This is the second time in about 2 weeks that I was going to have to fix her appearance to make her ok with being seen in public. (The first incidence is a whole other story for a different time!)

I said to her, "I'm tired of fixing you when you make decisions like this!!"

She told me what her friends had said. And I told her that she needs to quit listening to people who say things like that to her. She is beautiful and if someone tells her she needs to change something, she needs to realize that either they are blind, or they feel threatened by her and want to make her do something stupid so she isn't so pretty.

And then she told me something that I cannot change. She said that other people don't think she is pretty.

I tried for so long to not make outer beauty important. But it is. She is smart. And really, she is confident in that area. She knows she is a smart girl. And, after years of convincing, she believes she is pretty, and she knows that we as parents think she is pretty. BUT, she doesn't believe other people think she is pretty.

As I was falling asleep last night I thought of all the girls I've had influence over- from when I was growing up to girls I served in YW. Why didn't I tell the every time I saw them that they were beautiful on the inside and out? I mean I did the best I could. But why didn't I do more?

And why does society think it such a bad thing to compliment others? Why don't people start every greeting with a compliment? Wouldn't we all be and feel so much better if we did?

So, this is something I vow to work on. Especially with the growing girls I have influence over. I will compliment them. And I will try to do it every time I speak to them. And, I will continue to tell my beautiful daughter just how beautiful she is.

And maybe one day she will see herself as Heavenly Father sees her, and know of the love He has for her. And when she knows that, nothing else will matter.