It never ceases to amaze me the gems one can find blogsurfing.

One of my favourite bloggers (I know you hate to be called one, Erna, just being literal here) gave her readers a piece of herself recently, and as I listen to her soothingly beautiful voice, I cannot help but think of the times when even though I was much too young to know the real meaning of love, I still had to go through the pain of yearning and rejection and the subsequent (and drawn out) self-loathing.

Not being an attractive teenager, I've had a few close calls to having my heart irreparably broken. Of course, my friends will say otherwise (I wasn't traditionally pretty but I had my ways). Unbeknownst to a lot of people, people who think they know me included, despite my seemingly happy-go-lucky-forever exterior, deep inside, I had hurt much more than I allowed the world to see when things did not go the way I'd anticipated them to. That approval or agreement wasn't going to come as easily as it did to other people.

And at 15 or 16, such a discovery was life-changing.

Looking at my beautiful girls, I think about when they too will come in contact with the world, a world which has succumbed to the convenient and the easy and the cheap. Where being good-looking can get you anything and everywhere.

Will they use their God-given beauty? Why not? Why do things the hard way AND finish last? Why learn about pain and desperation and disappointment and failure?

Thing is, I find myself knowing that as beautiful as they are, they will have shortcomings. I don't know what they are yet, but I know they are there. I know they're not perfect.

So like their mommy, they will also learn to find - and use - what is beautiful inside.

Just in case.