Day 85: Calling Forth the Beauty

A woman that I know told me how she rescues babies from the streets, yet while in the midst of saving these babies,she loves on their birth mothers. I asked her how she could do it (because I find myself frustrated and angry a good bit of the time) and she told me this. She said, "We were each created with something beautiful at our core. And for most of us, this broken world covers us with so much darkness, that that which is beautiful within us gets buried so deeply, that it might never be exposed. Our job, as the Church, is to see what is beautiful and draw it forth. We have to look beyond what we can see on the surface, and look into what Jesus can see."

I really took those words to heart, and I have applied them to my babies. We have foster children, as most of you know. They are precious little babies who at 22 months of age have seen more life than most of us should see, or most likely will ever see.

When we first got them, they were two sides of a coin. One was dark and brooding, a heart and spirit so hardened and calloused that it was shocking in someone so young and so little. The other was fragile, emotionally and physically. Fearful of strangers, fearful of more things than I care to write about.

The one who was dark and brooding had something beautiful inside her. And we have seen that coming forth. The one who was fragile and broken, we have seen her heal. And now she is angry. But we are okay with that too, because we know that if that anger didn't come forth, then it would be buried deeply within her as well, and that should not be. Beneath her anger is something beautiful, and we are calling it forth. Every now and then, we see glimmers of the most incredible joy on their faces.

All that to say, they are beautiful, a beauty we have yet to fully see or know, but we know that He has seen it. He put it there. What a privilege to get to see it emerge. I John 3:2 Now we are the children of God, and what we shall become has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.