I shared a post recently about how I put a filter on an already beautiful sunset. When I got home from CVS and was hanging up my photos, I just kinda sat back, thinking. Why had I done that? The camera had captured the sunset that was already beautiful--why did I feel a need to put on an filter? Why did I still feel it was inadequate to share, simply as it was, raw and beautiful and natural. 

In the morning I have a habit. I look in the mirror to see how much acne had 'grown' on my face overnight, if any scars from previous acne has faded. Before I go out of the house, I make sure I cover them. I don't want anyone to see. I don't want them to see that a twenty year old has as many black heads and growssness as she did when she was ten. I don't want them to see the scars. I look more beautiful without them there.

But isn't that what we all think...no matter where the scars are, don't we all find them better hidden? Is it more than just the acne...does it go deeper? How we become hiding not just the physical scars but the emotional ones too? Have we become a people that no longer wishes to be human? Because that's what our scars make us. 
Human. 

Yesterday I found myself seeing how many friends have liked my IG and socials....whether or not people have commented on certain photos, what their thoughts were, how many followers I have. Great. I've just got sucked into social media like I never wanted. My goal was to spread light...not count followers. 

This past summer while swimming with a friend, I commented about her freckles and how I've never noticed them before. "They're beautiful," I told her.
She looked at me like I was crazy. "I hate them -- that and my hair."

She's beautiful and she doesn't even know it. 

Some people would kill for her looks. She's not perfect, no, but none of us are. Her wildly curly is envied and those freckles -- they're adorable.
Why do we hide features other people love? Why this endless cycle of wishing away what other people want? Why are we never satisfied? We crave what other people hate, and the cycle goes on. Why this endless wanting to be 'beautiful' when we're already there? Why must their be stipulations for a certain type of beauty? Why can't we as a world just stand up and say, "we're all beautiful because that's how we're created"?

But the world has become about filters, likes and dislikes, covering up the scars, and looking better then we really are. Even makeup commercials tell you you need longer lashes, a bigger smile...cover more of those zits. They tell you that you shouldn't be happy with you are you right now, that you're not perfect enough, good enough.

This morning, sitting in bed, the morning sun just rising over the browned grass of fall, I thought..."If you had no one else to compare yourself to, if you didn't have your laptop and phone, if it was just you at this moment without every expectation commercials and people throw at you...would you be happy with you? If filters and make-up and deodorant and CGI and photoshop, didn't exist...would you be happy with you?"

And honestly?
I probably would be.

Guess what? These photos I took have no filter. Just realness.