Real Beauty

Beauty:

• A solitary weekend retreat to spend time in meditation and prayer.
• A fulfilling and life-changing ministry to people in spiritual, physical, and emotional need.
• An hour or so spent in intercessory prayer daily.

Real Beauty:

• That hour of "quiet" every day during which my children know mommy reads her Bible and prays.
• A fulfilling and life-changing ministry to four beautiful children with very real and very important spiritual, physical, and emotional needs.
• Teaching my children to pray for others.

Beauty:

• Afternoons of fun as a young, childless couple.
• Weekend trips to exciting places.
• Date night almost every night.

Real Beauty:

• Afternoons of fun parenting four adventurous children.
• Weekends of playing at parks, reading children's books, and watching G-rated movies. . . and the occasional family vacation.
• Having the oldest kid ask us to hire a babysitter and go on a date every-once-in-a-while.

Beauty:

• Lovely, new children's clothing.
• "Quality" wood and fabric toys that spur the imagination of young ones.
• Hours and hours of exploring nature together or reading books out loud.

Real Beauty:

• Clothes with holes and stains that show they have been put to good use.
• Sticks and bricks and other backyard finds that have been magically turned into swords, houses, food, babies. . .
• Looking at my kids nature finds and listening to them read books to eachother as I clean or tend to the baby.

Beauty:

• Garden beds about the house.
• Beautifully decorated rooms.
• Gourmet meals.

Real Beauty:

• A haphazard fairy garden that the children have helped design.
• Crayon drawings hanging in every room.
• Homemade pizza and wings on Friday nights.

Beauty:

• A new wardrobe every season.
• A body toned and in kept in shape through an hour of exercise every day.
• Manicured hands, pedicured feet, plucked brows, and styled hair.

Real Beauty:

• Every spot and stain on my shirts that shows that I have kids with messy hands or babies that spit up.
• A belly stretched out by four miraculous blessings, and the daily exercise of picking up babies and chasing kids.
• Dish-pan hands, dirty bare feet, tired eyes after a night of nursing a baby, and the pony tail that the kids like to twist around their fingers.

I want to beautify -- to minsiter, meditate, pray, make love, date, romance, explore, read, provide, garden, decorate, cook, shop, exercise, primp. . . . But right now I have to embrace the real beauty in which I find myself during this season of my life.