Grateful

 “Have you considered using lipstick?, my well meaning and loving relative asked me., “I think it would add a bit of cheerful color to your face” she said. “Your lips are pale and thin and it would probably look good on you.”

My relative isn’t proud or judgmental.  She loves me. And I happen to know that she was raised with the adage that “it behooves us all to make the environment of others pleasant, and one way to do that is to look well put together”.  I get where she’s coming from and how she’s trying to be helpful.

Perhaps lipstick would make me “look better”.  I did wear it, and blush, and mascara when I was in my twenties. But I am not interested in using them now.

When I look at my face in the mirror and I see my thin, pale lips, I am grateful that I have lips! And that they work!  I am also grateful for my eyes that need glasses, my long straight nose, my unremarkable, undecorated ears, and my skin with its rows of wrinkles around my face and down my neck.  What a blessing lips, eyes, noses, ears and skin are!  The are complex, amazing, physiological structures.  They bless my life every single day.  The blow me away when I think about them and how much they do for me.  

Some might say, that wearing lipstick is a way of making a good thing “better”.  But color and style are not in my definition of “better”.  They are in my definitions of colorful and stylish. I like color, and I think style is an interesting topic to briefly peruse when it shows up in my reading, but they are qualities that are way down my list of valued characteristics.  

And so I find that it feels kind of odd to consider adding a quality that is way down my list of valued qualities to an object that is, in and of itself, already absolutely amazing and for which I am extremely grateful.

I don’t mind at all when others wear lipstick, or make up.  I find it interesting to see what they have created on their faces.  Some of them are real artists with it and I appreciate the art.

But, I am okay with my face just the way it is. And I am over-the-moon grateful for it just the way it is.