I want to seek beauty. To be surrounded by it. To absorb the gentleness of grace. 
For grace is beautiful. 
      And so often, when my focus can steer off course, I find that I  –   I want to be beautiful.
But if grace is beauty, mercy is then lovely. And compassion…selflessness…these are simply stunning. 

I want to be beautiful.    I want to be seen as all things lovely.    To be regarded.     To be seen.

So I must immerse myself in grace. Tender mercy. Flooded compassion.
                  For when I submerge, I come up changed. When once I was dry – cracked, rough, and when I then dive into the deep, to the river of defined blessing – I am changed. I surface, quenched in new. No longer coarse, but smoothed at the edges. 

   There are countless other ways to which I could strive to be “pretty”, or “head-catching”. And I am human, and a woman grown from a girl raised in a world demanding of what it deems worthy. So I have wanted to be that which is not best to seek after. I have wanted to squeeze into labels an ever-changing society sews as an acceptable identity. But I know better. 
                                                                                     I can’t pretend that I don’t.