On Beauty

Kintsugi, meaning  "to repair with gold,"
is the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold or silver
with the understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

Cute. When I was a teenager, that’s the word I usually heard when I got compliments. And in my struggle to accept them, I was OK with that one. (Is that a universal struggle? Do we all have a hard time accepting compliments?) Cute is a word that fit my self-image, I suppose. Cute, like a button. Or a bug. Something small that you might miss if you weren’t paying attention.

Pretty was a bit harder. I didn’t feel pretty. Pretty awkward maybe. And pretty uncomfortable. I suppose most middle-schoolers feel that way at some point, and for me, it was somewhat magnified. The summer before sixth grade, at the early stages of adolescence, my mom, dad, and I moved from the northwestern tip of Michigan to upper South Carolina. I had a Yankee accent, giant early-1980s glasses, shiny silver braces, a Dorothy Hamill bowl cut, and boobs that were so big that my closest friends called me Stuff because I had so much of it. Nothing seemed to fit, not even my name. In the north, everyone pronounced my name Share-un. Now, on my first day in sixth grade, my art teacher kept calling out a name that wasn’t mine: SHAY-run. She kept saying it over and over again, until she said my last name and I realized she was talking to me. (Eventually, most of my friends called me Shay because I never really did get used to answering to Shay-Run or the occasional Shern.) I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, and I felt way too visible. I felt seen when what I really wanted was to be unseen, to fade into the background, to go unnoticed. And I most certainly did not feel pretty.

So I introverted—a natural tendency, I suppose, for an only child. And the trait lingered as traits tend to do when you acquire them during your formative years. Eventually, I grew into my own skin, of course, becoming more and more comfortable with who I am. Even though I still tend to hide the big boobs as much as possible, I embraced my inner dork a long time ago. I’ve never really lost the Yankee accent, and I am just fine with that. And I’ve gotten much better at accepting compliments.

But there is one that I really struggle with: beautiful. It feels huge. And heavy. And meant for someone else. 

Here’s the real problem: I’ve been hearing it a lot lately. Every night, in fact. For months now, my boyfriend ends every day—every single day—with a text message: “Sweet dreams, beautiful.” At first, I laughed it off. “Me? Beautiful? Right.” It just didn’t seem to fit. But after hearing it countless times, I realized the person saying it is one of the most authentic people I’ve ever met. I didn’t doubt other things he said, so why was I doubting this one word? So, word dork that I am, I wrestled with it. And I began to wonder why I couldn’t embrace it. Why didn’t I think I was beautiful?

At this point in my life, I am proud of who I am—proud of the hard work I have put into uncovering authentic Sharon, proud of how I am moving closer to becoming who God made me to be, proud of the way I have unbecome what others think I should be and taken off a whole lot of hats that didn’t fit, proud of the way I have finally moved into my own skin. I love me, and arriving at a place where I can say that required walking a long, hard road—sometimes alone but most often with worthy companions who saw me more clearly than I saw myself.

And yet, I struggled with this word. Beautiful. Why? For me, cute and pretty feel like they are mostly about external aspects. “You have such a cute smile.” “Your eyes are pretty.” But beautiful? I felt exposed. Like someone had actually seen me, and I don’t mean my smile or my eyes or any other external attribute. I mean seen, like Avatar “I see you” seen. (In the movie, the Na'vi greeting “I see you” has a deeper meaning—something along the lines of “I understand who you are.”) Was I really ready to be seen?

As I wrestled with this, I recalled one of my favorite quotes, which I first read about 10 years ago. I swear, this is one of the best things I’ve ever read. I think I just about have it memorized:

“You meet a girl: shy, unassuming. If you tell her she’s beautiful, she’ll think you’re sweet, but she won’t believe you. She knows that beauty lies in your beholding. And sometimes that is enough. But there’s a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands. It is hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you .... suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn’t seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen.” Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

A few years ago, I started to hope for that. I longed to feel that way, to become something more than the mess I was on the inside. And I thought that kind of beauty would come from the outside—that I would need someone to mirror it back to me, that it required someone seeing me as beautiful in order for me to be beautiful. And I suppose I thought that beauty was, for the most part, external.

But then, as I started out on an intentional journey to find authentic Sharon, I didn’t want how I felt about myself to come from anyone other than myself and the God who dwells within me. I needed—I mean really needed—to be whole, to not feel so broken and empty, to be able to hold my head high and be proud of who I am, to really love me. And I did that, which, again, is a story for a different day (or probably several different days).

And then a couple weeks ago, I read this quote. Maybe you know that already. You might have actually heard my head explode:

“You will meet plenty of people who are pretty but haven’t yet learned to be beautiful. … Beautiful women glow. When you are with a beautiful woman, you might not notice her hair or skin or body or clothes because you’ll be distracted by the way she makes you feel. She will be so full of beauty that you will feel some of it overflow onto you. You’ll feel warm and safe and curious around her. Her eyes will twinkle a little, and she’ll look at you really closely—because beautiful, wise women know that the quickest way to fill up with beauty is to soak in another human being. Other people are beauty, beauty, beauty. The most beautiful women take their time with other people. They are filling up. Women who are concerned with being pretty think about what they look like, but women who are concerned with being beautiful think about what they’re looking at. They are taking it all in. They are taking in the whole beautiful world and making all that beauty theirs to give away to others.” Glennon Doyle, LoveWarrior

When I read that, I thought: I want to be that person! I want to glow and be filled with so much love that it spills out of me. I want others to feel safe with me. I want my eyes to twinkle because my heart is full of so much joy that it’s leaking. I want to take my time with other people and fill up my own cup with relationships that have deep meaning and create real, honest, and lasting connections. I want to be surrounded by genuine people who are walking their own journeys with great intention and in hot pursuit of authenticity. I want to really pay attention, to be present, to be right here right now.

And then, out of the blue, I realized something: I think I did that. That’s where the journey to authentic Sharon took me. I filled up the empty inside, and now it’s spilling out all over the place. And I think—now I’m speaking for someone else here, and I’m taking a wild leap— that is exactly what my boyfriend sees: “Look! Right there! You are beautiful. I see you.”

I know now that beauty doesn’t lie in someone else’s beholding. It doesn’t lie in the Yankee accent or the giant glasses, the braces, or the Dorothy Hamill bowl cut. It’s not in all the stuff, including the big boobs. It was in me all along. I just needed someone to name it, to point it out, to say “I see you. Great job. Keep being you!” And I know that I am not beautiful because I am seen. I am beautiful because I am paying attention. I am beautiful not because of what I look like, but because of what I am looking at. This whole beautiful, messy, painful, brilliant world? I am soaking it all in—every last bit and so much of it that it is spilling out and I have to give it away.

You see, the story I tell myself has changed, with the help of some beautiful people who helped me rewrite it. I have surrounded myself with authentic people, and I take time to tend to these relationships. And when I inevitably start to re-read the old story, I turn to them—my tribe that is so full of beauty that it overflows. I feel warm and safe and curious around them. And their eyes twinkle a bit. They look at me really closely, and they see me. Even on my most awkward of days, even when I mess up, when I feel like a misfit, and even when I am broken—perhaps even because I am broken—I am beautiful.

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” ~Khalil Gibran  

“If you're pretty, you're pretty; but the only way to be beautiful is to be loving. Otherwise, it's just 'congratulations about your face.'” ~John Mayer