beauty is in the eye of the beholder

It amazes me that some girls I know whom I know to be absolutely beautiful don't see themselves the same way. They'll look in the mirror and groan and talk about how they're overweight and need to work out, or how their hair is a mess, or how they need to put on makeup. Or I'll be walking somewhere with them and thinking about how I wish I had hair like theirs and they'll catch a glimpse of themselves in a shop window and comment, "I hate my hair!" Or we'll take a picture and they'll look at it and say, "Well, I look like crap today." Sometimes it makes me mad. Are they just saying that to make themselves look better? Do they even know how many girls are jealous of the way they look? But most of the time I know they honestly do think that about themselves. And then it makes me sad. I don't know if it's just me, because I tend to look at someone and call them beautiful because of what kind of a heart they have, but I think they're incredibly gorgeous.

And I have a theory...my sister would laugh because basically my life consists of these random theories that I come up with that all have nothing to do with each other and are generally unimportant for life and are also not backed up by any kind of fact but are just made up in my head. Anyway. I have this theory that you tend to look like what you are. As in, if you have a beautiful heart, your face will reflect that. Even before you're old and have wrinkles that define your default face, you can - or at least I can - look at someone and have some kind of idea of the person they are. I don't know how this works, and it's definitely not anything that would be scientific, but I really have noticed that. Please tell me I'm not crazy. :)

And from a totally selfish perspective, I wonder if these girls have ever thought that if they're talking about how unacceptable they look, how that reflects on me? In other words, if they think they're ugly, what do they think I am? I have some pretty beautiful friends, anyone would think so, and when I'm with them in comparison I feel like I look even less pretty than I actually am, which is not an awful lot.

On a mostly unrelated topic (another one of my theories is that everything is at least remotely related so you can probably trace some kind of a far-out path of your brain's journey from one topic to the next) lately I've been surprising people a lot. I noticed that a lot on the Greece trip. Once, on the bus back from Philippi, Eric and Sabrina and I were doing iPod karaoke and someone said, "Lauren, you do it!" So I said, "Okay, fine, I'll try it." And Eric looked surprised and said, "You'll do it? Wow, Lauren, you just surprised me." And I jokingly said, "I surprise people every day of my life." And it seems like recently I have been! haha.

It's interesting to me because for a long time I wanted to be more outgoing but I didn't want to push myself into fake extravertedness. And now I can be more outgoing. And I'm still myself. I think it's because on the one hand, I feel more accepted by my friends. And on the other hand, it doesn't matter as much to me anymore, because I'm beginning to truly know that my identity is found in Christ. So I can actually say what's on my heart without fear...okay, without overwhelming fear...that I'll say something completely wrong and mess something up. And I can do something without being afraid that I'll look totally stupid and make people dislike me. Because, love me or leave me, I belong to Christ.