Beautiful

I remember as a child, my mother combing my hair….putting it up in pigtails or some such.  I remember that I would cry and fuss.

“It hurts to be beautiful baby girl.” she would drawl in that southern belle voice of hers that still breaks my heart.  So much pain in that voice.

I remember, and it makes me wonder….how many times do we miss the beauty for the pain?

I think of the beautiful families that I know walking a dark road, I think of the last year and just how hard it’s been…how many times have I asked the Lord to remove the pain?   How many times do we begrudge the work that the Lord is doing because we do not understand, because it is too painful. 

It hurts to be beautiful baby girl…

We have felt led by the Lord to take another direction, not necessarily a different one but one that takes us further than we expected to go…we have walked where we felt led and the way looks dim.  It’s seems a little crazy.  It is all wild and wonderful when played out in our heads but real feet walking a very real road get blisters sometimes, they hurt, they stumble.  We get tired, we get cold and lonely and sometimes we care nothing for roses because we have been too pricked by thorns.

Beauty hurts, baby…

Today, faced with indecision and the temptation to despair I remember the roses, I remember that beauty comes with a cost and I remember that He makes all things beautiful in His time.  Once more I bow my head to the pain and I submit to the husbandry of the Father knowing that all He has for me is good.   And once more I say yes, even if in saying it I tremble for fear of what that means…