We're going high fashion this week.
Welcome AwakendCreative to week 43.
Wowsers,
We're in the homestretch.
And yet,
We keep going.
I'll meet you there.
How often do you look in the mirror?
Really look.
I stopped wearing makeup a solid decade ago.
Goodness,
We might be preaching 15 years.
It happens.
At some point,
The face you paint into the world starts to look different.
Alright,
It looks different all the time,
But I think you get the idea.
Different choices,
Different options,
Different demands from your time.
Slowly,
Old habits fall away.
Old patterns disappear.
And if like me,
You find yourself chucking the whole makeup kit into the rubbish.
It's hard at first.
You glance in the mirror and you see someone else.
A face not quite you and yet all you.
And then little by little.
That's me there.
Tie me.
Welcome.
Hello.
And then you glance less.
There's not so much time before that,
Mir.
Every once in a while,
You slip on your reading glasses and check for a stray eyebrow.
But when was the last time you looked in the mirror?
Not to fix anything.
Not to apply a layer of blush or powder your nose.
Have you seen your eye color lately?
Have you noticed the line of your lip?
What does the edge of hair that curl around your ears.
Look like on you.
For you.
To you.
Awake and creative.
This is your unique self.
The line of chin to neck.
The shoulder blade and clavicle.
I admit,
I spend very little time seeing this body form that carries me through this earthly life.
I feel it.
A lot.
And I appreciate it.
In ways I never have before.
I think this might be more female than male,
But.
.
.
Male too.
I have four sons.
I know it happens.
I want to change things.
To look a little like that.
Less like that.
More like this.
All of it.
Thus pressing.
Thus noticing.
Less relevant.
As I keep on.
Now one can say there's a time for everything.
There's a certain period in this human existence where that external face the clothing,
The body.
They're what we represent.
They're what we present.
But then also there's a time.
On what we think.
What we create.
What we use this body on this earth for.
Is what matters.
That turn is a gracious one.
Grace-filled.
I spent decades thinking that attraction was external.
Yet always aching to be seen for what I could do,
Create,
Think.
But conventionality wasn't the platform in which I thought,
Or created,
Or made.
Awake and creative.
If you're in a struggling time.
If you're in a crunchy time.
If you're in a long haul of uncertainty and indecision and difficulty.
Keep going and wait.
The shrugging off moments.
The realigning moments.
The keeping going moments.
All of a sudden,
One day.
And all of a sudden,
One day isn't all of a sudden and one day.
But I'll listen.
You all of a sudden find yourself.
Not glancing in the mirror.
Because you're creating.
Not checking your mascara.
Because you're making it.
Not looking for the latest fashion.
You're doing.
Today,
Awake and creative,
I challenge you.
To grow into your own skin.
Just as you are.
Coco Chanel.
Yep,
The great fashion maven gives us our mantra for this week,
Our quote.
Elegance is when the inside is as beautiful as the outside.
I'd like to think.
Elegance is when the inside.
Is so much more beautiful.
Than the outside.
Awake and creative.
Today.
