Beauty Being Born

    I've visited some beautiful places. Avalanche Lake at Montana's Glacier National Park and Alaska's Denali National Park when it was clear and sunny enough to see the mountain! Minnesota's Itasca, birthplace of the Mississippi River. I've wondered at aged fountains and cathedrals across Italy, viewed the Nepali Coast of Kawaii from the water, trekked a living volcano in Guatemala (some of it on a horse that wanted to bolt), and studied Mexico's sandy beaches and sparkling, ocean water. Those glimpses of breathtaking beauty and the vibrant stories they tell speak to deep spaces in my humanness as one fashioned by the same creator. They call deeply enough to cast off any duty or still any abiding restlessness and proclaim who I am. Free. Redeemed. The beauty calls to an aliveness in my soul. Beauty calls to beauty, I've heard.

    By contrast, I've journeyed some really ugly places as well. 

    I was belittled repeatedly throughout my first year of school by my kindergarten teacher. (Evidently there is a proper way to color the apple red and it is not "roundly"...and don't get me started on the fact that she made me throw out the Leprechaun with moving arms and legs because I did not follow directions and color him green. He seemed happy and green alone just wasn't happy enough in my mind. Yes, I did not see my kindergarten report card until I was an adult because she wrote on it that I was SLOW...as in mentally.)

    Wrestling through the teen years was hard work. The mixed messages from adults about where I should be in my spiritual walk and how it should look. Numerous "unrequited loves". My inability to shake my splendid averageness. Body image *shudder*. I was a serious teen and even now am a somewhat serious adult. Come to find out that most of my peers thought my serious, shy demeanor was actually stuck-upness!

    Then I moved into young adulthood more at loose ends than ever. I did not understand how a relationship with God was supposed to work. What was the "right path" for me. Didn't want to be on the wrong one. I'd been raised in church, but all of the dos and don'ts did not seem very practical to the deeper things I was trying to sort through in life. Wasn't mature enough to manage finances. Couldn't figure out how to get traction into college or career or meaningful relationships. Did I mention body image? Well, it was still a thing in young adulthood. Then I thought that enlightenment and adulthood would arrive with the decision to have sex. *Insert eye roll here* It didn't.

    Lots of joy and fun happened over those many growing up years too, but the fun and happy wasn't what drove me to my faith and to redemption and the very greatest beauty there is to be found on this earth.

    Anguish did.

    Pain in a strained marriage and my own inability to make it better did. Trying repeatedly without success to make life and relationships"right" did. The harsh judgement and thoughtless words of others while I was treading stormy waters did. Grief over my first husband's suicide, all that preceded it and the agony of raising 2 precious girls as a single mamma did. 

    The brokenness of the world inflicted on me and by me did.

    I just wanted God to make life different. Make it easier, more peaceful, less grueling and conflicted. No matter what I did or how I said things or planned carefully my actions I couldn't get it right.

     I was exhausted.

    And that spiritual and emotional exhaustion, that brought surrender. After surrender and over seasons, a new life dawned. A life that isn't all on me. A life cradled in the grace and mercy and love of my Heavenly Father. I can trust the heavy lifting to Him. Living a life of abundance and knowing it's abundant even when the waves are crashing over the side of the boat. Even when the lightning strikes and splits the mast in two!

    In the last handful of years, however, I found myself in a familiar conversation with the Lord as I watched the carefully curated lives of both of my daughters twist and sway in ways that I was not prepared for and did not want to face.  None of the prayer was new, but I poured it all out before him at once. I had been a good mom, hadn't I? I prayed with and for the girls and had deep, authentic, difficult conversations with them. I invited them into faith, didn't force it on them and trusted God's leading in decisions for how we invested our time. I was intentional and devoted to equipping them for adulthood, but they were headed for hurting and I was desperate to keep them from that. Spare them, please spare them. I can't, you can. Please smooth the way. 

And then, when I ran out of words, I was still and listened...

"Jesaca, do you trust me?"

"Yes, Lord, you know me."

"What do you desire for these girls?"

Silence. The tears began to come. "To know you. To know Beauty and Abundance." My spirit shouted because my mouth couldn't.

"How did you come to beauty? Was the way smooth? Do you think I desire any less for them?"

"No. I know you don't."

"Rest. Trust me. They must walk their own walk with me and nothing you do can spare them from the pain or the beauty. All of it comes from me."

    I had become spiritually and emotionally exhausted again with playing the part of rescuer and trying to smooth their way. Now I rest. Well, I pray and rest. He's shifted my focus back to Him and to walking as He calls me to walk and stepping into spaces where the gifts He's given me can minister for Him.

And there are moments when I get a peek at beauty being born.