To Be Called Beautiful...

I have come to the conclusion that people desire to be found attractive to someone. I didn’t realize how deep this craving was, though, until Grace helped open my eyes.


Grace is the least fashionable person I know. And she doesn’t seem to mind either. Grace just wants things to be comfortable. Since Grace was an infant, she hated tags in clothes, and would wear her shirts inside out so they wouldn’t itch her. She rolls her pants up to her knees so they won’t drag; she wears two pairs of fuzzy, striped socks to assure her feet will not get cold; she will wear my Mom’s old big puffy, pink winter jacket inside in the heat to assure herself she will not get sick; this list could go on and on. For this reason, I had come to the conclusion Grace doesn’t care at all about being considered pretty. – I was wrong.

I began to realize my miscalculations about two weeks back. Grace was sitting at the counter in our kitchen looking at her very short nails. I was bustling about doing homework, and glanced at Grace just long enough to realize how peculiar this was for her. I asked her how she was, and she replied sadly, “Katherine. You always paint Lydia’s nails. Why don’t you do mine? Is it because they are too short and not pretty like hers?”

I am glad I had the decency to stop for an hour and paint her nails. I am ashamed I stopped there.

Today I was yet again working on homework, and Grace was sitting across from me working on her laptop. I was daydreaming a little, when I noticed the middle of Grace’s eyebrows were completely missing. Alarmed, I asked her what had happened. Gracie covered her eyebrows with her hands and darted from the room. As she plopped on the couch, I sat beside her and repeated my questions. She said in muffled tones, “I shaved my eyebrows.”

Horrified, I asked her why she would ever do such a thing. She looked at me with her big, beautiful eyes and said, “You told me I had bushy eyebrows. I thought maybe I would be prettier if I cut them off.”

Well- I felt awful. Not only about calling her eyebrows bushy a while back, but also for having not realized all along how much this dear girl in front of me wanted to be thought of as beautiful. How could I not see?



This is no new suggestion that I have- there really is nothing very brilliant about it. But what I want to say is this. All around us are people who we think we know so well, but in truth, we don’t. We don’t know how much they hurt or long for love- how much they long “to be called beautiful.”

I don’t ask for you to go to another country- I don’t ask that you try to change a hundred people’s lives. But I ask that you would look around yourself, as I do the same, and tell those close to you how much you love them. Tell the just how beautiful they are.