Beauty Changes

I don’t know why, but a memory from a Sunday evening this past June is burned in my brain.  It had been one of those extremely HOT days, unusually hot for June, so we had decided not to do our run until around 8:00 that evening.  Due to the stroller/safety/amount of traffic on our little county road we chose to go back to town to run at the park.  On the way home about 9:30 it has JUST gotten dark as we topped a hill on the county road and came down into a valley where there was a PERFECT stand of beautiful dark green corn (yes, the farm girl in me still notices those important details about the neighbor’s corn crop) about waist high and just above the corn were more lightning bugs than I had seen in a long time.  There were THOUSANDS of them.  And in the light that was just fading, the sight was so breathtaking I stopped the car, turned off the headlights, and just admired the beauty.  It was the perfect scene, we had just finished a great run, the three of us were all together, it was a summer Sunday night so I didn’t have the stress of work the next day, it was just such a beautiful sight and feeling that I just couldn’t stop breathing it in. I wanted that beauty to last forever.  We couldn’t linger for more than a few minutes (after all, I was sitting in the road with my headlights off) but I held on to the visual memory and the feeling even after we drove on home.

Last night, on the way home, I took that same road and for some reason when I topped the hill to come down into the valley it just hit me… how much can change in a few months’ time.  The corn is now harvested, nothing is left in the field but the brown/gray stalks on the ground, it was about 4 hours earlier, but the daylight was almost gone, the plentiful lightning bugs of summer were replaced by several deer standing in the field hoping to find some grain the combine missed, and the feelings in my heart are much different.  HOWEVER, despite the twinge of pain I felt as I thought about all the change, I couldn’t help but notice there was still so much beauty in the place.  The colors of the fading sunset were spectacular, there are still a few leaves on the trees beside the field that were reminders of the beauty of the fall, the deer were peaceful, and the way the whole valley looked in that dusk color scheme reminded me that beauty is still there, it just changes.

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday.  Now let me just say, I hope her genes for “looks” run strong in me because the woman somehow manages to look YOUNGER every year!! But, I think about how her beauty has changed to me.  As a little girl I thought my mom was beautiful because if her big 80’s permed fluffy hair, large clip on earrings, and dress clothes that she wore to teach in.  As a teenager, I thought my mom was beautiful because she tried to stay on trend with her clothing, she got RID of the fluffy 80’s perm, and she managed to maintain beautifully painted (real!) fingernails.  As an adult, I look at my mom and still see SO MUCH outer beauty, but what makes her most beautiful to me now is the look on her face when she plays with my son, the love in her voice when I’m crying in her arms, the willingness to come at a moment’s notice if I need her, the concern she takes to fix family meals around my hubby’s diet for health issues, the fact that she prays over us unceasingly… THOSE are the beauty marks I see the most now.  There is SO much beauty to her, but how I view it changes. 

In this season of Thankfulness, I will admit, I have really struggled some days to find beauty in the broken.  There has been a lot of change in our lives that has been hard.  But I am learning this… beauty changes.  Some things that once seemed commonplace, are now cherished treasures, and things that I thought were beautiful treasures are now faded and tarnished through the eyes of my heart.  I am so very grateful that GOD does NOT change and what we have through Him will last forever.  There is always still SO MUCH beauty in the many things in life He is given us, we just have to see that as the seasons of our life change, our perspective on beauty, changes.

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”   Psalm 27:4

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!! I am so thankfully for YOU, my blog readers and followers.  Your encouragement to my heart means more that I can tell you.