Redefining Beauty// Guest Writer

My first guest writer is my amazing friend, Tofunmi! She is very talented, and I am so thankful she has agreed to write for my little blog! I’m sure you will enjoy her post as much as I did!

I guess you could call it my inner cynic, cruel and intensely analytical; it’s the part of me that cannot see beauty as an internal quality. Don’t get me wrong, I am very ashamed of this aspect of my being. It seems straight-up cruel to confess that sometimes you possess the mentality that there are people who are beautiful and people who are not. I am scared even as I am writing this of the negative ramifications that may come from me writing that last statement. I would again like to reassure you that this frame of mind is from my dark and sinful nature, that Christ is ridding me of day by day. I just don’t think I ever fully grasped the concept of inner beauty, I mean I understand that human beings are made in the image of God, and so by their very nature they are made beautiful, but I’m not the person who looks at someone and notices that natural beauty. I guess I sometimes view beauty as black and white , either you have it or you don’t, rather than a spectrum of different kinds of beauty. I want to share with you today something God showed me, a glimpse into the world of inner beauty. There was this one time at chapel during worship when I saw this guy dancing. He wasn’t just doing the ‘swaying thing’ or clapping along to the song, he was dancing. He was going for it, and he didn’t care who saw him. It wasn’t so much his dancing that left a lasting impact on my heart, but the fact that he was dancing for the glory of God. He wasn’t doing an impressive contemporary routine or hip hop solo, he was just dancing to praise his Creator. When I was reflecting on this, I thought his dancing to be beautiful. The fact that a high school student could let go of people’s opinions to honor God was amazing. On that day, I saw another form of beauty, the beauty in serving God, above man. That was huge for me. I’ve been blessed with many more of those experiences where I’ve heard my classmates exalt God and seen them put Him first, and I continually praise God and thank Him for their lives. Unfortunately, my inner cynic still creeps into my train of thought when I see and encounter different people. But that experience in chapel and the other experiences with my classmates remain an important and fundamental step on my journey to silencing my inner cynic once and for all. This beauty in serving God is one of the many beauties on the spectrum, and I’m glad that it’s one that I can recognize and appreciate. I know that in time, beauty won’t be solely external to me, but I am truly grateful for this step in redefining beauty.