Maybelline and Maybe Not

Maybe I like storms because I don’t have frizzy hair…or an old basketball injury. Nothing about me serves as a weathervane for their entrance, so I’m often found running through mud-puddled parking lots, dodging the drops and the puddles I wish I could play in. Somehow adulthood frowns upon showing up muddy for work.

Either way, anyway, whatever way, I love storms, especially the hours before they come. I love the rustling leaves that whisper, “here comes life,” and the wind that teases at the hemline of my skirt, beckoning me to twirl, asking me for this dance.

Something in me yearns to write when the rustling starts. I’m sitting in a beach chair in the front doorway of my house, ankles on the front porch, body just inside the doorframe. There’s nothing quite like watching the earth prepare to take a shower….sometimes it seems like a petulant child, kicking and screaming while being thrown over someone’s shoulder and dragged into the house for the dreaded nightly bath….forgetting that while the bath may clean him, he can still make another mess with the waterproof crayons on the bathtub walls. Other times, like a woman bottling up her cry for months, planning to auction it off, unopened, at the next charity event… but it explodes before she can put on her pearls and go.

I can’t tell which flavor storm is arriving…the frogs and crickets seem excited, but my parents’ dog has been huffing for an hour, something he does before a storm starts. We’re told the animal hospital sells an anti-anxiety jacket for dogs to combat this. I’m not even sure what to say about that.

Tonight I experienced beauty, not just in the sky and its’ sound, but in a story…a story of beauty, of great loss, confusion, denial, pain, and redemption. To me, it was an echo of Eden…even though Eden was the absence of many of these things, redemption always takes me back to Eden. Eden echoes in those moments of stillness and wonder found in an unexpected compliment that changes your day…a lingering “I’m not letting go for anything” hug…a porch swing and a masterpiece sunset…a groom’s face when the church doors open and reveal his bride…

I wish I could capture that beauty, hold it hostage, and take it in every hour. I wish I could share it and The One who created it with the world. But the world has taken this beauty hostage before I could. It has taken her and redressed her and dyed her hair some awful color and made her up to be something she’s not…and yet, she’s the standard now. Even if I don’t like her, I try to be her…or at least, try to be like her—bad eyeliner and all! I see what the world says is beautiful and I buy into it. I’m a shareholder and I’m holding out that the market’s going to rise again…

While I know what’s true, that I’m made in the image of God, (which makes me beautiful, like He is) I live like I’m having to invent beauty and constantly improve on it. Ironically, one of the greatest things about God is that He alone is unchanging, so His beauty is unchanging…and if I’m His reflection, that says everything I need to know about me.

Beauty can’t be redefined; it was perfect and didn’t require revision…

Yet tomorrow morning I will reach for my lip gloss, my running shoes, my extra-whitening toothpaste, my diet/fat-free/calorie-free something-or-other, trying to increase my beauty and ultimately my self-worth. Haven’t I figured out yet that it doesn’t work? There’s always 5 pounds left to lose, always a new cardio class, always a new mascara promising “5 times bolder, longer, luscious lashes.”

If only I could rest in who I was created to be and believe Psalm 45: “The king is enthralled with your beauty; honor Him, for He is your Lord.” Dang! I think the King’s opinion matters more than anyone’s, mine included. So I’m going to try it out, believing in beauty, studying His beauty, owning my beauty, and honoring Your’s and yours’. I think there is much freedom to be gained by this, much healing to be known through this, and much beauty to be shared.

Maybe Maybelline had it right after all…

“Maybe she’s born with it…”

“I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful; I know this fully well.” –Psalm 139