beauty

we had a beauty discussion last night with all the girls on this trip.
what we think about beauty, what guys think about beauty, how beautiful we are in the eyes of God.
i like that we have those conversations, they need to happen. we need to articulate our beauty and what we like about ourselves.
but i just wish we could take it deeper then a proverbial pat on the back. i wish that we could articulate how wildly the father pursues us. how He created romantic love to show us the desperate part of His love. to show us how consuming this all is. i wish we said, i am beautiful because there is Christ in me. because i have died and He has taken residence in my life. I am beautiful because the Holy Spirit pours out of my eyes, my touch, my words, and my actions. what is beautiful is Christ, and he overwhelms me.
what is beautiful in this life is things that are laced with you, things that are covered in your fingerprints.

when they told us to write down something about beauty i knew i couldn't define it so i wrote things that i know are beautiful.
i wrote about rolling tired and sore out of tents and watching the sun blink and rise quietly. about memorizing poems and reciting them to open spaces and people we love. about silence and being alone in the hands of the creator. about old novels and all things good and noble and true.

"And i remember feeling that way back in Colorado, that i was not the center of the cosmos, that there were greater things. Larger things, massive structures forged in the muscle of earth and time, pressing up into the heavens as if to say the story is not about you, but for you, as if to remind us that we are not gods."
Donald Miller Through Painted Deserts