Something Beautiful

He messages me. He takes time and is intentional to respond to me when I message him back. He doesn't keep me hanging, but gets back to me as soon as possible.     He compliments me. He tells me that I am intelligent, beautiful, caring. He recognizes and admires my heart for God, and he talks about the Bible with me.   He makes me laugh, engages my mind, and challenges me to think in new ways.   He is upfront and straightforward with me. He is clear about his intentions, clear about his interest in me. He doesn't string me along or keep me guessing or make me wonder what is going on.   He speaks truth to me, affirming my identity in Christ. He speaks life over me. He makes me feel like I am Dorothy, suddenly stepping out of black and white and into Oz, a land of color.     He makes plans and asks me out on dates. He chooses activities that we both enjoy, and he takes care of me from the moment he picks me up and opens m...

Some time ago, I met a very beautiful woman. I was at a dinner with my parents and some family friends and a couple from Germany. Almost immediately, I was struck by how beautiful this German woman was. She had lovely gray-white hair and beautiful, kind eyes with so many gorgeous wrinkles around them. There on her face, I saw written a lifetime of joys and sorrows. Lines from smiles and laughs as well as lines etched there by pain and grief. I know very little about this woman, just a meal's worth of stories, but studying her face, I leaned over and whispered to my mom how beautiful this woman was.  Even as I thought this, I was struck by how this woman would not even come close to fitting the societal norm of beauty. Our society wants to say that to be beautiful means a flawless complexion, a perfect size whatever frame, and hair that is rich in color. And yes, that may be beautiful for a season, but let me tell you what real, true beauty looks like.  Beaut...

I have spoken much about brokenness on here, especially over the last year, but I have spoken little about healing, and I think that is because I don't think that I have really understood what healing is or what it looks like. I always think about healing as the miraculous works that Jesus did. The instantaneous "Get up and walk" and "Your faith has made you well" and "I will. Be clean." This is what I have always had in the back of my mind as healing .  Over the last year I lost track of the number of times I asked God to heal me, comfort me, fix my brokenness. But I heard no voice granting me that healing in a moment. I felt no comfort in my pain. I was continually overwhelmed by my brokenness.  Healing like the Healer is mysterious, and I do not claim to understand it. All I have is my personal experience of healing which like almost everything else in my life has not come in the least how I expected it to.  I always thought healing would be a...