Warning: Reflections of Flaws Turn Out To Be Beautiful

I recently posted a picture on a social media page that got me to thinking.  It was a picture of a very old oil painting that I just love that someone had photo shopped to make look new again.  Sure in the photo shopped version, the colors were vibrant, perfectly balanced, and every single brush mark had been smoothed out.  As I looked at this new and improved version, it struck me that I didn't enjoy it as much as the original.

The original had cracks in the paint.  Every single brush stroke the artist had made visible.  You could almost sense his intensity in various portions of the painting.  His joy in the little touches so soft and gentle.  A frustrating harsh stroke along the bottom edge.  Every flaw in the painting simply adding to the beauty of it.  For with every flaw, there was a story.

That is how I see myself.  There are flaws when you stand to close.  You can see the scars, the wrinkle lines, the gray hair, and the few extra inches that have suddenly appeared.  But when you stand back and reflect upon the whole, the beauty emerges.  It is true of every single person that I have met.  Every perceived flaw simply adds to the beauty, adds to the unique story that makes a person shine.

Sometimes if you stand back from a distance we can even miss the flaws for the beauty is all that radiates outward.  I am absolutely, one hundred percent flawed.  I have cracks.  I have harsh strokes.  I have gentle creases.  I am even a bit torn and tattered in places.  However, the reflection in the mirror every morning is a beautiful story that I would not change.

I had the unique opportunity to work this past year on a project that we spent a whole month RE-Thinking the topic of beauty.  What constituted a flaw?  Who defines it?  Why do I believe it?  The conversations touched the core of beauty as we all self-identify in different ways with the terms beauty and flaw.  That month was followed by another opportunity to dive into a spiritual and moral inventory process.  I spent an entire month with a group of 30 women as we revealed our selves in depth.  We laid it all out on the table, every flaw, every defect that we could perceive and the stories that surrounded them.  It can be quite a process to become completely "naked" in front of a group of women.  The result was again profound.

For every flaw, for every defect of character we could find within ourselves, we also found the simple beauty in the journey that not only revealed the flaw, but a new definition.  That definition was beauty.  So as I look in the mirror today and see what social definitions may call flaws, I see only the beauty of a journey.