Getting REAL! Taking the layers off one by one and finding true beauty and acceptance

Thank you Shakti Mama, Ariella, Kat and Maureen at Twig and Toadstool for inspiring this challenge to "Get Real" and embrace ourselves and each other.... Just the way we are!

Okay so this was the first "Real" shot of the day. And I was so happy with how blurry it turned out ;) Until I realised that the focus of my camera was on manual and therefore I wasn't really playing by the rules.

A little better....
Eeek! Okay this is me full on, no make up at the end of a busy day with the girlies :)

Matilda wanted a picture with me when she saw I was taking my own photo and being a silly mummy. Well she's used to that. Again blurry, because she knocked my hand a little as I took the shot.

Thoughtful...
I have pretty much stopped wearing make up for the past couple of years. I usually wear my hair up during the day too but let it down in the evening around my family.
Also often I wear a headband or headscarf .
My deep desire is to learn to find beauty from my soul. I seek to nurture that more than my outer appearance now.

Letting go of the make up was part of the process of embracing myself truly as I am.
To find my real work in the tending, cultivating, and nourishing my true self, and my soul above and beyond the outer work of conforming to an ideal of physical beauty.

Make up and clothes used to be my protection, my mask. I used to "find myself" in my look.
But one day it occurred to me, that if my look was taken away from me, what would be left? What would be me? A social stereotype?
My soul is more than an image.

I have been trying to take the layers off one by one. I want to be real, I want to be authentic, I want my girls to know that a woman's beauty lies in her heart not her make up bag.

Little by little I have come to find my value in who I am becoming in God rather than how I look.

I remember, as a child gazing into my danish grandmother's soft blue eyes, cradled in laughter lines and wrinkles and the shadows of a full but hard life. And all I could think was, how beautiful she was. I even used to ask her.... "Tell me Granny, tell me the truth, are you really an angel?" I sit here in recollection, smiling at the innocence of a child. But that is the kind of "seeing" I have lost somehow, along the years.
The learning to see real beauty, and accept it in myself too.

Your beauty shall not come from outer adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."
1 Peter 3.

Inner adornments are the most beautiful ones. I pray to learn how to recognise and acquire them as I walk my journey.