surrounding yourself with true beauty . week 24 + one year of marriage thoughts

"Roses are red"
June 2018
#adobesketch

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?

I think I've always been in search of how to make things beautiful. Devoting your study-years to graphic design and fine art is quite the commitment to beauty. But studying it and living it is different.

During this #365daysofcreativity challenge, I've had to fight for a reversal of what OTHERS think is beautiful and focus on a desire to be truly ME in what I think is beautiful. This began a few years ago. I think it materialized fully through me moving to South Africa. Striping all that was familiar, I often sought things that I loved to comfort me. Music was one of those things. When it was quiet at night and I needed something to calm me from the hectic day, I'd put on Big-Band music. You know, Etta James, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington. I've always been drawn to this swinging style. The happy beat, tings and pings of brass, the funky melody that has irrational flow. I owned very little of this music. My iTunes was probably shocked when I started playing this music over and over. So why now? Why am I only owning this love of Big-Band music? I think I was becoming ME. This style wasn't popular in the 90s when I was a teen. I tasted teen years with whatever anyone else was listening to. I tried to love Usher. I bought into the pop-boy-band stuff too. I tried to like these things because others did and I wanted to like them too. But I didn't choose to listen to those 'popular tunes' after graduation. I loved the 20s flappers and the 40s-50s Sinatra. My old soul found truth and owned itself when I was isolated from those that really influenced my acceptance.

I discovered my own beauty when I stopped (still in the process) comparing myself to others. I've had some health issues that have recently reminded me that health, not image, is most important. Whole30ish eating and moving more have really boosted my physical joy and accepting the beauty of health. Marriage and being loved fully by my husband has helped this process too. If only I had accepted this before marriage and truly believed what God said about me ... but the human relationship GOD SENT ME has shown me God's view of me and given the gift of beauty from another's eyes. [Note: I'm fully aware that marriage is not all beauty. I've learned that marriage is actually a mirror, reflecting my sin and true self more than Disney love stories. But the transformation that has happened in my heart and mind over the last year of marriage ABOUT MYSELF has been worth the fight in beauty education!]

What I'm trying to convey is ... through this last 6 months of testing my creativity, I've learned my style, my bend to beauty. I've owned the process of trying and trying again. I'm discovering even more deeply what makes me feel joy through visual cues. And surrounding yourself with beauty is Biblical. God did it. He loved what He created and called it good.

So the next 5-6 months of my #365daysofcreativity is not only to create but find truth in what illuminates beauty in my life... Educating myself of how God has made me and living true to that!