When Beauty Hurts

Life is full my friends.

I don't often glorify in the earthly things, in current riches. I'm not the kind of person that goes on and on telling people how blessed I am and how humbled to have such personal gain.

I wake just about every morning to a cup of fresh coffee my husband has prepared as he leaves for a job that gives enough of a paycheck to enable me the status of stay at home mom.

I feed and dress our lively, adventurous and healthy children, we play and straighten our lovely home that is beautiful, cosy with heat, cool with air conditioning and running water.

We go places, we visit friends and parks, have picnics and visits to see things.

We buy things, food and clothing, books and toys, gifts and things for crafts.

We return home, we have visitors, we play and talk with our neighbors, share things and borrow stuff.

We work our land, we weed and water our gardens, we sweep our front porches, we swim in the pool and bbq our meat.

We take baths and showers in clean water, we read our devotions and get tucked into clean beds.

We watch the sunset hover above our tree lines and we talk , and we drink coffee feeling sleepy and full as we make plans for the next day and the next, full of dinners and friends, chores and errands, building and planning and people that need help and funny stories and we think and feel like good people with good things.

Life for us is sweet.

Normal, and secure.

We talk about the cold that's coming or about how hot it is. We stretch our legs and smooth our hair and lay down or maybe stand up.

We start our cars, and put away our bags, we write and we listen, we sing and we dance. Sometimes we whisper, or yell and we feel prickles of pressure and shivers of nerves and the sinking of realizations. We find things, and know things, learning, looking, running and resting.

Such beauty hurts because something within feels a sliver of "what if " such a life can be so full of sweet things can it not be lost?

There are people around us losing, maybe battling trials of illness and uncertainties, failure, depression and tears, hardship and pain.Every person lives the unfortunate, everyone has done the unforgivable without realizing the weight of it.

Sometimes they're angry, they ache, and feel that alone means everyone else around them has to hurt too while they use words that sting and twist the good until it's bad and everyone else feels how they do as though they can't trust anything or anyone, not themselves not anyone and when they talk there isn't an answer.

Absolutely no one could ever freely forgive, absolutely no one is so perfectly created that they could have such a love that doesn't hurt with the "what ifs" and the sting of comparison or pride without looking at it in an idolized sort of way.

Can we claim to know a God that can give good things and still take them away for His own glorification? Can we trust a God that gave a Son to take on the bad and the dirty, the ugly and the shameful? If I lay hold to that promise, that the inexcusable in me is the same as the unforgivable in you than why do we compare and hurt and point?

When are my good things less than your good things ? Do they even look that perfect? It's just things that can be gone by tomorrow.

Without a perfect God beauty wouldn't matter at all.

Because He sees my friends, He knows the secrets, the piles of trash shoved in the back of closets, the dirt under the rug, the dusty corners and our stains and deformed thinking that we wouldn't dare utter out loud.

Beauty hurts, no matter how pristine , there is a stain that nothing on this Earth can remove.

If His Son didn't die I couldn't rest in this knowing about the roof over my head and the shoes on my feet. I couldn't hear the laughter of my children and the crying for dinner and the crumbs on the floor.The laundry, and garbage night, the anniversaries and the meetings, the running late and the appointments. The lines of waiting for your turn and the picking up, the spilled cups the leaking pipes. The dirt trailed in, the muddy knees and the smears of toothpaste. Open doors and cracked windows. Running out of milk and forgetting the bread, none of it would matter.

So stop looking around and seeing the other side of the fence and thinking your perfect isn't so perfect or maybe thinking your wonderful is the only and best kind there can be. Stop feeling that stab of being let down through comparison and pride and looking at everyone because you can see the flaws and you need more as you run on empty even when you work hard and you struggle until its over, the end of a life of a moment and of a time.

Without a God to fill that, to show up when it's all so perfect that beauty will just hurt.

Without Him it's just going to hurt.

You won't be able to stop pointing, and sending those words and typing that stuff and making those calls and giving those looks as you find all those pieces and parts of moments and spots in time that you think will destroy beautiful things.

Only a perfect God could make this end all the letting them know how it really is and making those decisions that haven't anything to do with anything but how you feel and how you think it all should be. Will it ever matter as much as the heart, a heart that can feel how it all would matter but that inside all that matters is you ?

Maybe you don't know Jesus. You don't know how dirty and wrong all that is, and how beautiful sure isn't pretty at all next to someone that would give His life to save your messy, regular self that takes out garbage and sweeps up crumbs and picks up dirty underwear who has to think about nice things to say when they haven't had enough coffee that morning. Someone that put His perfection on a cross for someone who blows their nose, and changes diapers and has to take a shower. A person that has worried lines on their forehead, and chipped nail polish, who gave birth and trips on their own feet . Who ages and has freckled skin and sagging stomach muscles with calluses on their feet, scars on their hands.

Nothing is beautiful without Jesus. Do you hear me? Nothing, and not a bit of it matters without Him.

Today I am resting in that. That beauty hurts, and without Him it would mean nothing.

Today its only something, because of Him.

Modesty in a Modern World

Modesty in a modern world; a world that says less is best and more is even better. More clothing in our closets, more value based on cost and brand and the idea that we may appear more desirable with less clothing.
They tell us cover our faces with more makeup while we should wear revealing things because the temperature outside is warm although our country is blessed with central air conditioning in almost EVERY structure in America.

I struggle to keep up with my closet always searching for presentable things that don't cost a lot and keep to our household standards of what we wear. So starting now I am giving myself a thirty day modesty challenge. I will go through my closest and find thirty combinations of clothing that are both modest, thrifted, gifted or traded plus they must all be low cost and cute.

If you want to see what modesty in a modern world can look like check out my instagram here and see some of the crazy, frugal and different outfits I can come up with in thirty ways.

Dear Daughter's On Mother's Day

Dear Daughter's on Mother's day,

"The idol making factory in our hearts need no extra occasions to worship both pain in our lives or victories. It doesn't need the internal list of ups and downs marked by the bitterness and failures being revisited again and again and added to the bag of discontent and comparison over and over again."

Mothers day can become another day of comparison for me. Amidst the mother's luncheons, Sunday sermons centered around Proverbs 31, the cards and the flowers, the breakfast in bed, it all brings me down to a deep sadness.  Because for me, I'm in the dark on this. I don't know what makes a good mom. And I became envious and discouraged when I see relationships that are not what I have experienced.  

My heart, my human heart revisits everything that ever hurt it, and everything that didn't go her way and everything she doesn't know. I struggle with seeing other daughter's my age who have relationships with their mom's. The kind with trust and love, with God at the center of it and I want to cry out do you realize how wonderful that is !

On these days I question my mothering of my own young daughter. Is this right, is that good enough?  Am I turning you away from God, am I even a good mom?

Will she think of me someday intentionally checking off in her head the things she won't do as a parent because of me?

Will I love her through her mistakes, can I hold her when she's screaming no and embrace her for exactly who she is even if it's not like me ?

Will she know a Saviour, that transforms her into a godly woman who stretches her hand to the needy, that speaks kindness and has gentleness with self control and confidence in no one but Christ?

Will she became a mother that puts Christ before all following after Titus 2:5 -

"To be sensible pure, workers at home (or about and out ) being subject to husband's so that the Word of God will not be dishonored."

Dear Daughter's on Mother's day you are not alone if you wonder about these things.  Or wonder why it hasn't ever been an easy road as a daughter and if your daughter's and son's will ever  "rise up and call you blessed." Proverbs 31.

Today I will not listen to my heart,  I will put aside that I am someone's daughter here on earth where humans fail every day and lies tear things apart .I will rest in Christ's promises and His truth alone that made me a woman, a mom and a daughter. I will forgive with Jesus's help and follow Him because I am His daughter first.

"Yet with respect to the promise of God he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith , giving glory to God. " Romans 4:20