Broken But Beautiful

I like to look at magazines. Don’t you? I enjoy looking at the pictures, not just reading the gossip. Articles are nice too. And the recipes are fresh with new ideas about cooking, steaming or baking the most delicious dishes on earth…well, unless you’re comparing them to my mom’s chicken curry. The ideas I get from looking at pictures of other women in magazines are two fold. I see the newest make up trends and decide which looks I am going to copy or one-up, and I also see the looks that are just too out there for my own taste, no matter how cool they may look on the woman in the magazine. But sometimes I can tweak the look just a bit and it becomes ME.

So, even though I look through the newest magazines, I am not trying to become someone else. I am just looking for ways to make me feel more attractive. I think we have all been there before…needing to feel prettier. Maybe we just need to give ourselves more attention. But no matter how much make up I put on, or which piece of clothing I put on, I feel the need in my heart for a different kind of acceptance. Sometimes even in a crowded room with people passing out  compliments, I can still feel a little…broken.

Well, about a week ago, I got out of the car and noticed a butterfly on the ground. He was pretty damaged. An inch of one wing was missing. The rest of him was beautiful – a mix of colors; orange, yellow, brown and blue. He was broken, but he was still beautiful. I took a picture of him as I thought of how God had created this beautiful creature and how he could still be so lovely in his brokenness.

A Deeper Perspective

We all go through things that cause our hearts to ache, making life a struggle. The bad day at work.  The cat knocking over a bunch of little pebbles from a decorative plate that used to sit prettily on the coffee table. Your little boy spilling chocolate milk on the floor.  The loved one passing away. We are all susceptible to being broken, and, yet, I believe that in our brokenness there is beauty in resiliency. No matter what we go through, we can choose to get back up and keep going. Sometimes we get back up for someone else. But no matter what the reason, we can choose to grow from the situations that make us feel broken.

You may feel broken, but you, like the butterfly, are still intricately beautiful.