Long hair, beautiful face, perfect teeth, white as ivory... Big long lean legs, nice round booty that sits up high enough to put a wine glass on. Blue eyes, Hazel eyes, Brown eyes, and perfect ears..perfect nose...not too wide and not too narrow. Thick eye-brows and long pretty eye lashes.. not the fake ones either. Let's even go as far to say, nice breast, maybe a C cup. Not too big and not too small. A walk that will turn heads allll the way around..a smile that can catch the eye of a blind person...and hands as soft as a babies bottom. Many of these attribute to what we would call the perfect woman's body. You know the figure 36-24-36 oh, what a winning hand...she's a brick house..... I'm sure many of you may know the rest of the song...so there's no need for me to complete the lyrics. LOL. But what if for some unforeseen God forbidden reason, you no longer had those beautiful attributes --- would you still be beautiful without it? Now, I've always considered myself to be a pretty girl. Back when I was growing up, pretty girls were thought to be light skinned, long hair, nice smile, nice butt, long pretty legs, (no scares), cheer-leader, majorette, type...and she had a beautiful BIG personality. Those were the girls most of the boys looked at. Many were seen on the arm of the most valuable football or basketball player. Jersey and all...If you were anything other than that you weren't considered a pretty girl. Now, today, I totally don't agree with that. God has made us all beautiful and in His likeness and image. But what happens when what God gave us is no longer apart of us? Here's my story. Now, this is my BRAND my BEAUTIFUL BIG SMILE... people that know me, knows I smile all the time. I even wrote my first book about smiling. Well, on April 20, 2017 I was eating a salad and a piece of my tooth broke off while chewing. I couldn't believe it... a piece of my tooth broke off and I wasn't even eating anything hard. Lucky for me I had a dental appointment the following week for a teeth cleaning, so I would have them fix it with filling and I'll be okay. Well, that's not what happened. The doctor said they could not save the tooth and would have to do a tooth extraction and give me a partial tooth. I agreed to having the tooth pulled. On May 5th I went to have my tooth pulled. It was a painful process.... it's not like the tooth was loose and all they had to do was shake it a little and it would come out - NO, they had to numb my face, and almost put me to sleep to pull it. Once it was all over and I went home and looked in the mirror, the reality hit me..I NO LONGER HAD MY BEAUTIFUL SMILE BECAUSE I HAD THIS HUGE GAP IN MY MOUTH!!! :( The problem was, the tooth wasn't in the back, it was right on the side where the gap could be seen. I began to think to myself... how in the world am I going to ever smile again...what am I going to do now... and I love to smile...Everyone is going to be looking at me and talking about my gap. My husband will not want to kiss me anymore, which will make intimacy challenging.... we've never had that problem before and Lord, I don't want to start now. After a few days the feeling began to come back... again...I questioned how was I going to ever smile again with this huge gap in my mouth. And to make matters worse, the tooth was pulled out on the side where my dimple used to be... it was gone due to the anesthesia. I was devastated.. I begin to cover my mouth when I smiled because I was embarrassed first and I thought I wasn't beautiful anymore since I didn't have all my teeth. As I began to have myself a little pity party I began thinking about the many men and women who have lost their hair due to cancer, or who may have lost a limb in combat. And even for the worker who may have lost a limb while working on a machine, or the person who was burned on the face due to a house fire. How dare I sit here and complain about not being able to smile because I didn't have all my teeth. And what about the young lady whose boy-friend throw gasoline on her face because she no longer wanted to be with him. Not only that, I could think of something even closer to home.. my oldest sister Hope, who lost all her hair while under-going chemotherapy for Breast Cancer.... I began to repent for my selfish thoughts and began thanking God for allowing me to have the activities of all my limbs and the fact that I still had my smile even with a missing tooth - that would be replaced in a few months. This experience got me to thinking... how many of us question if we're still beautiful when tragic things happens to our best body attributes? When that beautiful beauty mark is no longer beautiful in our eyes. What happens when that long hair is lost to cancer treatments or to any other disease or medications? What happens when those pretty long legs have to be amputated due to diabetes? What happens when the car accidents takes place and your face is shattered by the glass from the windshield? Will you still be beautiful without it? Absolutely! Beauty is not surfaced. Beauty is the person you've become, the person God made you to be. The character you've developed during the hard times. How are beautiful things made? In the press... Don't be so caught up in the act of looking beautiful... as it is only temporal... Real beauty is in BEING your authentic self, being who and what you say you are, even with a gap. Don't concern yourself with looking beautiful - practice on being beautiful... :). Remember to Smile, Show Up Succeed Everyday Find Find Peace Within, Be blessed, Ms. Lisa
