{Adventures}

  I yearn for a million tiny, lovely adventures of aesthetic. When I was younger, I imagined everything had to be frills and flounce to be beautiful (my clothing choices of this period reflect this, I was a walking cupcake). My understanding of beauty has grown, and now I love the simple paired with delicate and lovely. Once, I would have longed for a luxurious ball, now I wish for a Kinfolk tea party. Once I wanted pearls and flowers to cover me from head to toe, now I want to stand in a field of flowers in the golden hour wearing a simple white dress. I have a thousand simple wishes like that. I yearn for the next time I can sit by my window on a rainy day, writing poetry and marveling over the thousand subtle colors in a "colorless" day. I long for spring to come again, when I can go for walks, looking for new budding flowers to befriend. I love exploring antique shops, in their shadowy, dusty loveliness, and ponder the lives of the previous owners of each lovely thing I see. I love to sit on a cloudy beach, the silver waves dancing and frothing in the distance, the gull's melancholy plea for me to join them in the sky above. Sitting in a summer meadow, the warm sun breathing soft kisses on the tall, bleached grass and the tops of my shoulders. All these things I long for, and a thousand things besides. I suppose they are all things with "scope for the imagination" as our dear Anne Shirley would say. God has given us a million lovely things, and I'm so grateful for each one of them. 

 

{Being Lovely}

Via Pinterest

 Is beauty something we are merely born with? Is it bound only to face and form?

   I am a beauty loving soul. I look for it in everything around me. My art and poetry are feeble attempts at scratching out the faintest semblance of the effect beauty has on my soul. Its nearly impossible to get into words the sensation beauty gives me. Its like being in the ocean. I am at once conscious of the heaviness of the water, yet also of graceful weightlessness. That's how my soul feels: pinned under the weight of deep feeling, yet exalted and soaring at it's delights. There is truly nothing like it.

   When I was a girl, I believed I wasn't beautiful. It pained me deeply for many years. I wish I had known then what I do now. I cannot tell the girl I was, but I can tell you.

You may have a face that is called lovely, you may not. But I can tell you, without hesitation, that you are beautiful.

• The way your eyes glow when you speak of the things most sacred to you...

• The music you listen to on pale, drizzly mornings...

• The gentle way you move when you wear something very dear...

• The thrill of your heart when you give or receive a gesture of friendship...

• The excitement you feel when you read your most treasured books...

• The thousand varied facial expressions you make that reflect your unique soul...

• The words you speak when you wish to ease a wounded soul...

• The tiniest little things you collect, perhaps illogically, because they make your heart happy...

   All the little ways you express the music or poetry of your being...

  These are the things that make you truly lovely. No amount of cosmetics will make up for the lack of it. Moments of beauty, especially slow, deliberate moments of beauty, will do more then all the creams and globs of shine and shimmer you could ever buy. Cultivate these moments. Cultivate the unique beauties of your soul. Your Creator delights over them.

You are lovely.