Do you know how beautiful you are?
When my friend Leaf pops into my house with her baby, they fill my eyes with beauty. The two of them together are so stunning, such a picture of love and sweetness and the beauty of a mother with a small baby. When I told Leaf this the other day she laughed and said, “I know I used to tell you and Winnie that all the time, but it’s strange how you don’t really feel it when you're in it.”
It’s true. When you are in the midst of mothering that small baby, you feel tired and worn out, sleepless and like your body is permanently curled into a ‘C’ shape from the weight in your arms. From your sleep-deprived, foggy brain, you can’t see just how beautiful you are. And isn’t that the truth about so much of life? At our most difficult moments, we are the most radiant, because something of the true character and nature of God shines out of us, but we can't necessarily feel it. Mothering is such a part of God’s heart, a little piece of the Supreme Nurturer, there on display for us every time we see the look of complete trust a contented baby gives her mother. There it is, a lesson through the most difficult and complicated of God’s creation: people. A beautiful lesson, a lesson like a jewel, because God is no boring lecturer; he teaches us about himself in startling flashes of light.
You are beautiful in the same way when you are at your lowest. When you feel that you might not make it, you shine with something more lovely than any of your effortless moments. Yesterday Chinua talked with our friends, Ian and Christy, for hours, on speakerphone from their hospital room where Ian is getting antibiotics for a mystery fever. I was supposed to be homeschooling, so I was only wandering in and out of the studio, but I kept catching bits and pieces of their conversation. Perhaps they don’t feel beautiful, Ian at times foggy with what he called Chemo Brain, both of them in the dullness and hyperawareness of hospital life. But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anything as radiant as those two, Ian with his heart full of hope and trust, Christy’s laugh ringing out in the hospital room, or the times she spoke passionately with tears in her voice.
You are so beautiful. In your honesty, pain, weariness and love. You are beautiful to God, he reaches for you when he sees you walking through the grocery store, mulling over which tomatoes to take and which to leave behind. You are beautiful in your honesty before him, when you reach out for him, and that is all that you are able to do. You are beautiful in your stronger moments, too, but know deep in your heart that God finds you beautiful in your weakness.