Beauty: the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound,, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).
What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of beautiful? A friend that is just gorgeous or maybe your children. Those are beautiful, but I wanted to share a story of beauty. It isn't the conventional beauty, when you first look you may even want to avert your eyes just because it is painful to see. Look beyond the scars.
The three words all little girls (and grown women too) want to hear .... "You are beautiful." How many of you have longed for those words when you are having a bad day and just aren't feeling very pretty? No matter where you go we are all the same, we crave affirmation. So is the story of Alice, a young girl from Uganda. Alice was very badly burned in a house fire leaving her with scars to her head, face and neck. With the help of a Ugandan veterinarian she was able to come to the ship. Alice has been with us from the very beginning. First as she waited for our hospitality center to open and now after her first of many surgeries. Alice has always been a little different from the other girls on the ward, maybe it is because she has no hair, or maybe it's because she doesn't speak French, but most shifts she sits on her bed quietly coloring with her Papa. But yesterday something else happened. When I came onto the ward yesterday she was happier and generally just more playful. She was walking around the ward with a big pink bow on her head bandage. One of my friends and co-workers told me why the change. I don't want to steal Natalie's story because there is power and emotion in her telling (I'll share a link when she tells it). But here is the most important part, after her dressing change Natalie handed her a mirror and she spotted the pink bow Natalie had secretly place on her head. She immediately giggled and couldn't stop smiling, she walked around the ward showing it off and receiving the affirmation of "Beautiful" or "Jolie" in French. When I arrived hours later she was still beaming. She had been an outcast for so long but that one pink bow made all the difference. This right here is why I love this job. It gives a whole new meaning to beauty out of ashes!
