Do you think I'm beautiful?

"When I let myself search for the truth of my heart, underneath all the learned behaviors and coping techniques is a woman-- make that a little girl inside the body of a woman-- who wants to grow up and be beautiful one day too.
Maybe there is a design flaw. Maybe I shouldn't have been made with these longings that cannot be realized. When I think about beauty, I picture Cindy Crawford and immediately tell myself to shut up. When I listen to my heart's ache to be known, it only makes me insecure and afraid. To think about beauty and then think about my flabby everything gives me pain. It just seems better not to go there. Avoid this one. Smile a lot and act happy.
And so I have learned to pretend. (Besides, most of the women I know are pretending too.) Pretend that I have a handle on body image. Pretend that I am strong and sure. Pretend that I don't long to be held and protected in the deepest places of my soul. Pretend that I don't long for more than the world says I can have or more than marriage has to offer. Pretend that it doesn't really matter if I am known or if I am beautiful.
I am not alone in my pretending or my longing. All you have to do is walk into a room of women and look into their eyes, each one desiring to be known as beautiful. Some almost ask, "do you think I'm beautiful?" out loud and some have learned to never ask it again.
When no one notices, we learn to pretend that it doesn't matter. But, Lord knows, it matters. It matters in your soul and it matters in the way you wake up every morning and step into life.
Maybe no one has ever really noticed you either. And you've learned to pretend that it's okay. IT'S NOT OKAY. You were made to be seen and known and loved deeply. And it's okay to want what you were made for.
...I am realizing that the feminine design, my design, is both mysterious and complex. And yet, the design is completely God's idea. ...I am supposed to have a passionnate heart that does not have to be squelched. I am supposed to yearn for beauty and long to be known deeply. I came wired like this. Every woman I know came with very similar questions and desires.
...When life comes undone, when pretending is not an option anymore, when everything has fallen apart and fallen away, amazingly, it all becomes very simple. When no one can do anything to help and there isn't a straw left to grasp or a mask left to hide behind, God gets to move center stage. He has our undivided attention. The questions that we've held out to everyone remain, but there is no one to answer them except Him.
In that place, I finally came to see that the questions are rightfully mine, but the answers that truly fill and give strength will come only from God. It is so okay for my soul and yours to scream Do You think I'm beautiful? and there is a transformation happening as I listen to God tell me, resoundingly, yes.
The beauty that I desire is not really about body image. (Okay, it's a little about body image. Shoot, some days it feels like my quest for beauty is ALL about body image.) But the deeper beauty I long for is about complete acceptance.
God, do You see me flawed and sinful and still call me beautiful? Do You see the loneliness? Do You see me struggle? Do You see the unmet desires of my heart? Do You see me trying to manipulate and control? Do You see me yearn for the things I can't have? Do You see me cry for time that is lost and the life I will not know? God, do You see me in all this mess and still think I'm beautiful?"
-Angela Thomas

(I can't really add to this.)