02 Oct A Letter to My Girl: On Beauty.

Dearest firstborn girl,

Your beauty, it takes my breath away. From the crown of your curly mane to the tips of your colorful painted toes. From your ink-stained fingers to your sometimes tear-streaked face. You radiate.

But.

Beauty is a fleeting thing, straw that looks very much like gold in a world that seems to be gathering straw more rapidly than ever. You are teetering on the edge of adolescence with an eagerness that is both endearing and terrifying to me, your mother. And you will be forced to sift through the straw engulfing you, clamoring for value.

INNER BEAUTY

So, my dear, we will learn together to cultivate inner beauty, to never be defined by your appearance, but instead by the measure of Christ reflected in our brokenness. We will use words like “strong” and “healthy.”  Words like “courageous” and “extraordinary.” We will love all that our bodies can do, in the myriad of ways they bear us up. We are an imprint of the Imago Dei, and we will honor the Creator by caring for his creation.  We will show kindness to ourselves, and others, in the way we speak of our countenance.

And dear daughter, beyond the porcelain skin cells stretched across blood and bone, deeper than muscle and memory, I pray for you an incandescent heart, luminous with the gospel, shining the light of a Savior who would die for you to live. I pray the fruit of the Spirit, ripe with love, will fall plentiful from your tongue. I pray the treasure you store up will not be shiny bits of fleeting praise and cheap baubles the world bestows, but instead, eternal riches hosted in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. I Corinthians 3:11-13

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

Beauty fades, and our bodies fail. And we are left with a legacy of straw or silver, piled on the foundation of Jesus Christ, poured out in offering for the gift of the gospel.

My love, you are beautiful. Beautiful because you are transformed, beautiful because you are His, we are His, and we bear that out, time and again to the end of our days. I pray you remember it always.

With love,

Mom.