The Pretty Girl

"Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain...." Proverbs 31:30

All I ever wanted, every summer of my high school years, was to return to school in the fall thin, pretty and cooler than I was last year.  I would watch MTV videos and flip through Seventeen magazine or the occasional Cosmo and pour over the fashions that were overwhelmingly adorable on girls built like surfboards.  I was a little more, as the current term is, curvy.  I would be less politically correct to say that I was pudgy.  As if that weren't enough, I had a wonderful case of acne that sent me crying into my room on many occasions.  It probably would have served me better to be a wallflower in those times but my exuberant personality didn't allow for that.  Instead, I became an eccentric metal chick.  I was proud of my leopard skin jeans, cowboy boots with spurs and lion mane of jet black hair.  If I couldn't be the homecoming queen, I'd still stand out.  I was voted Class Individualist in my senior year.  A title I was proud of. 

My rotund physique disappeared some time later along with the acne but the self-esteem didn't improve.  I always wanted attention from boys but when I did finally win some I felt awkward and under confident.  I wished I could be more like some of my friends. They seemed to have a new guy every other week.  Me?  I was the funny girl that all the boys seemed to think of more like a kid sister. Don't get me wrong, it had it's perks.  For one, I was heavy into the music scene in Boston.  I was on guest lists without any strings attached and I wasn't referred to as a groupie.  I was one of the cool girls but not one of the pretty ones you ask out on dates.  I tried to learn to accept my lot. 

I have been looking back at all of this over the last few days because now I am what I always wanted to be and to be honest, it isn't what I thought it would be. I am an attractive woman, especially for a person near 40.  My looks have come into their own and I dress for my age with a unique flair. I am comfortable with me.  What rubs me the wrong way is that seems to be what people notice about me first.  I am also a very intelligent person.  My mind overflows with ideas and creativity, literally every day.  It pours out of me.  If there is any one word that people use to describe their experience with me, it's inspiring.  I am humbled by that title.  I don't do anything to achieve it other than share the life the God has given me with other people.  I am more than just a pretty face.  When I was younger, that is all that I wanted to be.  It's funny how I've been given what I always longed for in my naive years and God has shown me that it isn't the be all, end all of everything.  Certainly my beauty is a gift but I love the other gifts so much more.  The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence and to be sure, it still has weeds and needs to be mowed.