A Higher Beauty

Tonight I sit here on my couch, just thinking.  It's way past my bedtime and I really need sleep, but I just can't shake this feeling and these thoughts.   A few hours ago I read some devastating news on facebook about a local pastor's daughter, 23 years old, who just found out she has cancer.  I don't know her, but by other people's description, she is a beautiful, young woman who loves Jesus. Many people are extremely shocked and saddened to hear this news. 

I don't know the family very well.  But I do know what it is like to receive a devastating doctor's report at the age of 23.  In fact, I was exactly that age... 23.  And hearing this news tonight, takes me back to when it was me sitting in that doctor's office.

It's something you can't prepare for. When it happens to you, it's like time stands still.  It can't be real.  Everyone is finding out the news and watching how you respond.  You are watching your own life too, to see what happens next and how you respond, because you don't know either. 

At such a young age, the devastating news hits much harder, especially for a young woman.  Many  questions flow through the mind.  Questions about the future, marriage, children, suffering, medical bills, pain, and the questions of why and how God would allow such a tragedy... especially to a young, beautiful and godly woman . And then there are the questions about beauty.  Will I still be beautiful?

When I was 23, I was told I had a very rare lung condition and by the time I was 26 I had been through 7 major lung surgeries and about a bazillion tests and procedures that were too numerous for me to count.   I had lots of love and support from friends, family, and community and I loved Jesus too.  I cannot even begin to describe how much all of the support meant to me.  But after a few years of tests and surgeries, people moved on with their lives and I tried to as well.  I sought God with all of my  heart because I realized that in the end, He was the only One who would never leave me.  And, like a desperately thirsty woman in the desert, I needed to know Him.  I literally cried out to him every night, seeking Him with all of my heart.

Last week, I went back to the Mayo Clinic for a check-up, where I had been at that young age having multiple surgeries.  The doctor who saw me last Thursday, stopped me on his way out of the exam room, gave me a huge hug and looked straight into my eyes and just stood there for a moment.  And then he passionately said, "You have gold inside of you.  If this had never happened to you, you would never know the courage and resilience you have on the inside."  Tears filled my eyes and his.

He was right.  A refiner's fire has been burning in my life on the inside of me and in the years that followed my surgeries, it was the Lord, refining me at an almost unbearable temperature for the purposes of being stripped of all of me and filled with all of Him!  But this doctor could see it and those were not just words.  He meant it with all of his being.  He almost trembled when he spoke to me.

To be treated as worthy of love and admiration for who I am and what I have been through is all that I long for.  That is all that I long for from the Lord, other than to be filled with Him.  Why?  Because it makes me feel beautiful. 

When I was 23, I would have defined beauty by outward appearances, circumstances of success, riches, a feminine figure, etc.  But now my body is scarred and not perfect as it once was.  My face has some wrinkles and my body is weak at times.  Physical beauty is a wonderful thing, but I know a secret.  The beauty that the Lord sees when He looks down from heaven is not flesh.  Flesh is temporary and it will decay and eventually rot.  The beauty that the Lord sees is something that many cannot see but it doesn't matter because it is the most real beauty in existence.  It is the beauty of gold on the inside, a pure love in one's heart, a soul that is filled with the Holy Spirit.  It is the sweet presence of a courageous overcomer, the eternal substance of a person who has endured devastating attacks and who has stood firm in her faith in God's heart of love until the end, no matter the diagnosis.  This is the strength and beauty that Jesus is coming for in His bride.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and Jesus's eyes are fixed on His refined and pure Bride!

And so I would say to this dear one, do not fear the loss of your beauty.  Your beauty is only going to become more lovely to the one who really Loves you.  And those who have eyes to see as He sees, will see your beauty too, in fact, they will see gold inside of you.