I Am a Woman.

I am a woman.

I know this might sound obvious to you, as it sounds pretty obvious to me, too-- but listen.

I say I know that I am a woman, but what I mean is I know that I am female. I know my sex, my gender, my anatomy and physiology. But what does it mean to be a woman?

A woman is perhaps one of God's most beautiful gifts to this earth. So much passion, love, and beauty enraptured in this one thing. When God made woman, it was not from dirt or mud, it was from bone-- from precious materials. It is like painting with gold or building a sculpture from the most precious stone. To sacrifice a piece of one creation, to take a part of one work of art and embody it in another... it's almost like adding a signature. God signed himself to the very part of us that guards and protects our livelihood... our lungs, our hearts-- the air we breathe and the blood that courses through our veins. He assigned Himself to us, a promise of fidelity from day one. He said, "it's not good for that man to be alone" and he gave him this beautiful, strong-willed creature, that oozes beauty just in the way she stands. Before she speaks, she is astonishing.. and when she speaks? Breathtaking.

Then the fall comes, of course, we know it well. What happens then? A woman, at her finest, at her rawest, is poetry in motion. She does not have to be beautiful according to the world, her curves and hips, her scars and undulations that she acquires from birth and thereon afterward give her such character as to make the strongest stare in awe. Wiry hair or golden locks, it does not matter-- there is something in a woman that demands to be seen and heard. But with the fall comes a knowing, and we find shame in our nakedness as a reminder of our own wrongdoing. From Eve on after, women have learned to hate their own beauty and have come to understand that beauty is unattainable for self but it can always be found in someone else; someone who has it more together, be it physically, spiritually, or what have you... Someone else is more worthy of affection than I.

Why do we want to be beautiful? Why do we dress up and kill ourselves with diet after diet and analyze the pound to pound stats of our body. Why do conversations in women litter with envy of body type or hairstyle. We mean only the best for one another but our hearts are broken-- for that beauty is not meant for us, but for someone else. We must learn to accept the lot in life God has given us... to be of lesser beauty, lesser validity, than the tallest or the most tan or the woman with the clearest complexion and longest, most flowing of hair. We compare, compare, compare. Dear God, how guilty am I of this?

And all of this thinking started with the simple agony of finding the beauty of another more valid than my own. It only takes a moment, a single second to stand next to someone else and find at least ten faults in your own appearance, heart, etc. Women evaluate, analyze, and agonize over beauty, but why? What in us desires to be beautiful, but not just beautiful... to be something desired-- of attention, of affection in friendships, fellowship, and in lovers. We want to be known, and for people to want to know us.

I am a sucker for a good story, I always have been. When I think about the women I have sat with in the late night and early mornings, the women who have entrusted me with their stories.. I recall how they looked to me in that moment. Their eyes gleaming with joy and longing, with sorrow and passion. Their bodies curled or straight, with hand gestures and brow raises that express the innermost parts of their being. No matter their physical type, I have always found them the most beautiful in that moment. It is because they are allowing themselves to be seen, to be truly seen in that moment. Every woman, every human being, longs for that-- to be seen as they are and not fixed, but admired. God made a beautiful kinship in women, for we have a mutual understanding that we don't want to be fixed, we want to be heard. We want to be loved for who we are, for every extra curve and scar, for every misplaced hair or asymmetry in our bodies; for the messy words that leave our lips before our brains have time to process them, for our faults and our failure, our successes and glories that God has delighted to place in us.

Yet the world has quieted that voice, that beauty, and sent us to compare ourselves, to divide ourselves... to simply be female, to be a lady but never allowing us to truly know the meaning of being a woman. The strength, the passion, the fierce love God placed in a woman is a terrifying, heavy thing. A woman can feel for a person, fictional or otherwise, at the drop of a hat. She can love with all her might and move the heart of God in doing so. She is a force God created that is not to be reckoned with. At her utmost she can be tall, short, fat or thin and it would not matter-- she is still this work of art, with the signature of God over her heart.

But to realize the truth of such a thing, to really know not merely with head but to let it be engraved in our very souls. To let our own beauty shine forth as is, whether accepted willingly or by other means. Confidence is a word we like to use to describe what we find attractive in other people. I've seen insecurities absolutely oozing from a person, masked heavy with said "confidence". I don't know what to call confidence in the truest sense, but it is not merely words or body language. The people who stand the tallest often fall the hardest. True confidence lies in a knowing that can be shaken but not crumbled. It is a humble fierceness, a knowing that will shine through but is not to be fronted with words or feeble body language. Any woman who knows what is attractive in this world can stand tall with shoulders back and spout a line or two about how confident she is, and still have an aching or a longing in her heart, a void that cries out at the end of the night when no one is around to impress or convince. She is a complicated thing of breathtaking beauty and earth-shattering sorrow.

So let yourself be a woman, a force to be reckoned with. To move the hearts of people and of God. Do not be afraid to be yourself, raw and unrefined or whatever you find yourself as now. But continually seek truth and ask yourself what it truly means to be a woman. When you find yourself analyzing the physical beauty, remember your story and find love for every part of you that was hand-crafted by God Himself. To be able to love yourself, purely and truly, is to be able to truly love God and love people, without fronts or facades, without fear or regret. There is no stopping a woman who truly knows that she is such.