This is real. The lines around my eyes that reveal how often I’ve laughed. The round belly that cradled three babies while God knit them together. The freckles that are like a scrapbook of all the days I’ve played under the big Texas sun. The extra pounds that I picked up over a million meals with the love of my life. The non-manicured hands that have washed dishes and babies and dogs, that have held tiny hands in the backseat, that have picked up lost blankies and matched up lost socks and wiped away thousands of little kid tears.
There is no perfection here.
But there is most certainly beauty.
I wish now that I had told that young cashier at the dollar store how striking she looked standing there, with her nose ring and her blonde ringlets. I wish I would have told her what that moment really meant to me, an exhausted, ordinary mother with a bag of Meow Mix cradled like a baby in her arms. I wish I would have shown her how most of the messages of this world are soul-crushing lies, but that we can’t believe them, we ordinary women who were intricately designed in the image of the one true God.
I left the dollar store and absentmindedly fed the hungry cat. She purred wildly as I stood there, bag of cat food still in my arms. She ate until her belly was round, and then she dropped at my feet in that carefree way that cats lounge. I thought of my own sandy-haired daughters and how hard they will try one day to meet impossible standards of beauty. I thought about how they will soon learn the heart-wrenching truth that there is no way to airbrush real life. And I prayed that they will grow into ordinary women who look in the mirror and see God’s hand.
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This article originally appeared at Your Mom Has a Blog.
