When You Long To Be Beautiful

Now he hops on the school bus with the rest of the big kids and waves at me until he’s disappeared into a muted yellow smear at the bottom of the hill.

But today, when his three-year-old sister and I curled up without him in the big leather chair and opened the Jesus Storybook Bible, I remembered another time when Joshua had been the small soft body on my lap.

And then, bright eyes shining,  he had spoken exactly the words that his weary mommy had needed to hear on that particular day.

There were once two sisters…..

The tale of two women…

One wanted; the other rejected.

One treasured; the other tolerated.

One the object of an ambitious man’s affection; the other the object of a devious man’s deception.

Joshua had been quietly sipping his morning dose of chocolate milk when suddenly he’d captured me with his tender gaze.

 He’d peered at me, fully dressed in my morning reality– tangled hair and last night’s mascara smudges, chapped lips and bared black circles hanging low beneath my eyes.

Then he’d cupped my pale cheeks with his small hands and lifted his lips to my ear. His warm misty breath had caressed my face as his words had embraced my soul.


“Mommy, YOU are a Rachel.”

My little one had moved his hands from my face to my shoulders.

And I’d placed our tattered bookmark in the storybook’s binding and pulled Joshua close to my chest.

Inhaling the little boy fragrance of sweaty hair and sleepy breath, I’d thanked the Lord silently for my soft-hearted fourth-born.

Joshua had laced his fingers through mine and echoed those precious words.

“Mommy, YOU are a Rachel.”

 The familiar scenes had unfolded like the choppy footage that used to skip and jump from my uncle’s two-reeled film projector when I was a pig-tailed child,

I could see the younger me standing gawky and awkward in the cornflower blue bathroom of my youth.

Glued to the mirror, she was scrutinizing every strand of dirty blond hair with a frown.

She investigated the soft pink blotches on her pixie face; then stepped back for a full-figured view and bemoaned the missing curves on her stick-straight frame.

She stood there, staring quietly.
Measuring.
Comparing
Yearning.

A furrowed brow gazed back at her from the glass, and I knew she wanted to change what she saw.

She wanted long silky hair like her sister and a quick-witted personality like her best friend.

She wanted a cute curvy form like the girl who sat in front of her in English class and blemish-free skin like the cover model on Teen magazine. 

The me who had yet to discover my place in God’s heart. 

Chosen. 

Cherished. 

And beautiful.

(Story excerpts taken from The Jesus Storybook Bible, written by Sally-Lloyd-Jones).

The Overflow:

  

How beautiful you are, 

my darling! 

Oh, how beautiful! 

-Song of Songs 1:15

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sharing in community with Jennifer at Getting Down With Jesus