You Are Beautiful, Grace. 1,000 times over. You are beautiful. From the inside out, you shine, sweet girl. Below is a letter from a parent to a daughter. Though I didn't pen these words in this order, my heart has said them...prayed them countless times. My mind has raced with these same thoughts and ached with the realization that some day you might not believe me when I say, "You are beautiful." So here it is, in the words of another aching parent, Matt Walsh. I've plugged in your name, so you hear these words in your own ear, your brainy smart head and in your heart of hearts. You are beautiful.
Dear Daughter,
I hope you never notice the magazine rack at the supermarket.
I hope you never see the billboards on the highway or the ads on
the side of the city bus.
I hope you never learn about Hollywood and the fashion industry.
I hope you never listen to pop music.
I hope you never walk down the makeup aisle.
I hope you never hate your own appearance.
I hope you never pick up the habit of putting yourself down
whenever someone compliments you.
I hope you never feel the pressure to physically conform to the
perverse standards of a disordered world.
I hope you always stay exactly as you are right now. Innocent,
carefree, unencumbered, pure.
But these could only be the hopes of a foolish idealist like me. I
can rub the genie lamp and make a thousand stupid wishes, but you
will grow. You will start to learn about the culture that surrounds
you. You will form opinions about yourself. Your vivacious, bubbly
happiness will give way to more complex emotions. You will develop
new dimensions.
In these times, here in your very early life, you only cry because
you’re hungry or tired or you want me to hold you. One day, though,
your tears will come from a deeper place.
And, when that day comes, I want you to remember one thing: you
are beautiful.
Beautiful. A work of art — full of life, exploding with a
unique, dynamic, vibrant energy.
Beautiful. Eyes like the morning, a strong and powerful spirit, a
face that brims with joy and hope. Beautiful because you were formed
by God. Beautiful because He has known you since before you even
existed, He has loved you since the beginning of time. Beautiful
because you’re real, beautiful because you are.
Remember this. It’s important that you remember it, Grace, as
you live in a society that’s dedicated to making you forget.
Those commercials and movies and songs and cosmetic products and
plastic surgeons and diet pills and trendy clothes and Cosmo magazine
covers — they will all try to feed you something. An image. A
broken promise. A false salvation. A poison. An airbrushed,
manufactured, painted over, photoshopped, marketing ploy. A
‘sexiness’ that’s about as beautiful and feminine as an
assembly line. A ‘hot’ that’s more sterile and processed than
canned food.
This is the price of living in a culture of consumerism. We all
pay the toll, Grace. Your family included.
See, modern humans spend every waking minute surrounded by
advertisements and product placements and carefully crafted, focus
grouped ‘messaging’ of all kinds. It tears you in a million
different directions, but the lesson is always the same: you are not
good enough. You need to be ‘improved,’ they’ll tell you.
Demolished and rebuilt. Shamed and made over. Pulverized and
perfected.
They pull out their metaphorical shotguns and blow giant holes in
your psyche. They hollow you out and convince you that they’ve got
the right thing to plug the gaps. They create a void in your
conscience and pour their propaganda into it. This is why we have an
unachievable, inhuman, digitized idea of beauty in our society. We’ve
fallen for the ultimate scam, and the scammers have reaped dividends.
...Apparently, the shops in the mall have collectively determined
that every woman is a size zero and none of them care about dressing
modestly (I still don’t understand how there can even be such a
thing as a ‘size zero’ — all human beings must, according to
physics, have
some mass, right?).
Of course, these stores are wrong. Most women aren’t rail thin
and many of them aren’t interested in dressing like music video
back-up dancers. You just wouldn’t know it based on the selection
at these boutiques, which, it would seem, have a clientele consisting
mainly of mannequins and runway models.
---a guy can walk into any clothing store and find something that
A) fits, and B) provides his body with basic coverage, which is the
whole reason clothing exists in the first place, according to
Wikipedia. As you will eventually discover, women have an entirely
different experience. For them, even something as simple as clothes
shopping becomes an all out assault on their values, priorities, and
body image.
And women aren’t the only victims. Men might not be chasing
Hollywood beauty, but we have our own unreasonable expectations,
imposed on us by ourselves and the world outside. We all — men and
women alike — feel the pressure to present a façade. We all want
to appeal to the masses. It’s like we’re locked in this eternal
competition to be beautiful, or popular, or successful, or whatever,
except we set our bar for beauty, popularity, and success according
to the standards of the very strangers we’re trying to ‘beat.’
We want to be like everyone, and liked by everyone, but also better
than everyone. This parallel battle for sameness and superiority
wreaks havoc upon our souls, and the damage can sometimes be
irreparable.
It’s gotten worse now with the internet and social media. The
struggle to impress our peers has invaded and consumed every minute
of our lives. Grace, please understand this: of the entire population
of the planet, only an infinitesimal percentage of them will ever be
more than anonymous to you. Only the tiniest fraction will ever give
you more than a passing glance. You should still love and respect
these strangers, but you don’t need to impress them. Be a beacon of
charity and truth to everyone, but you don’t need to worry about
the opinions and judgments of every single person you happen across
on the street.
It doesn’t really matter how they feel about you, yet many of us
want to be desirable to everyone, even and especially those we don’t
know. We want them to feel
something when they look our way.
Feel what? I don’t know. Envy. Admiration. Inferiority. A
combination of all three, I suppose. We certainly can’t allow them
to carry on with their day feeling better, or more attractive, or
smarter, or more successful.
A silly way to live, isn’t it? We gain nothing from it, Grace.
We do everything we can to impress the unknown faces in the crowd,
and where does that get us? Nobody really cares in the end, anyway.
Those faces are likely immersed in their own self-absorbed
psychological vacuums, and whatever impression we make on them will
dissipate as soon as we leave their line of sight.
We’ve all become like puffs of smoke to each other, evaporating
just as quickly as we appear.
It’s a vicious, violent, tormenting cycle, and I don’t want
you to be a part of it.
I’ll do whatever it takes to see to that, although honestly, I’m
not sure
what it will take, exactly.
Maybe I can just hold you close and love you.
Will that be enough?
And maybe I can just keep reminding you that you’re beautiful,
even now, when you can’t really understand what I’m saying. Maybe
if I say it often enough, you’ll believe me.
Will you always believe me?
I hope so. I pray so.
Remember...Mom is one of the very few people on Earth who will
tell you the truth about yourself. The truth that, from your first
moments in this world, you’ve been like a vision, full of warmth
and light. You don’t need to be photoshopped or edited or remade or
made up, and you never will. You don’t need a “touch-up” or a
“correction.” You were molded by the hands of God and given to us
as a gift from Paradise. You don’t need to add fad diets, expensive
shoes, and forty layers of makeup to the package.
You will meet a lot of people in this world, and many of them are
out to take something from you or sell something to you. So they’ll
try to attack your self-image, suffocate your confidence, make you
vulnerable, and seize whatever it is they want.
That’s the game.
Never play it.
That’s the lie.
Never believe it.
Never believe it.
I’ll protect you for as long as I can, Grace, but the day will
come when I can no longer shield you from it all.
That’s why Matt Walsh wrote this letter (and I am sharing it
with you, Grace). For the times when the pressures of the world —
the constant, deafening din, screaming “you’re not pretty enough,
you’re not good enough” — become a little too heavy to
shoulder. Whether it’s 7 years from now, or 17, or 70 — whenever
you need a reminder, here it is:
You are beautiful.
Love,
Mom
If birds weren't enough, Gracie discovered an alligator snapping turtle, an endangered species here in Illinois, while riding her scooter today. 
What a time we had in Holland, Michigan with our sweet friends, Kelly and Tom (the poser). You were on a mission, Grace, to capture the essence of the tulip from every angle. It made me smile and I would venture a guess that you might score a camera for your birthday for your creative picture taking pleasure. =) Here are a few shots from the day. 
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Grace speaks: Today I am thankful for my mother, who provides a home for me. I am thankful for a roof over my head and I'm thankful for God, who created this world and cares for me. 
Today we are visiting with good friends - fremly (friends who love like family) really- Uncle John, Aunt Kristin, UB, & Nick, Ben, Natalie. To Uncle Julio's we go with birthday cake in hand. Happy Birthday, in advance, to our dear UB. It is a good day to celebrate. If only we had a sunny spring day with NO snow.
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