Love for the unlovely...

(2016)

You loved beautiful things.

An old, worn out book.  A lace trimmed handkerchief. The perfect shade of nail polish. Flowers and gardens and herbs. A well-written sentence. Antique furniture. An ornate doorknob. Simple stationary. A hand-knitted scarf. Timeless jewelry. Children.

You loved not so beautiful things. 

An outsider, hard to be around. A forgotten Labrador, with much life and love left to give. The friendless. The betrayed. The left out. The tone deaf. The teased. The alarmingly imperfect. The ostracized. The beaten down. The underdog. You loved the underdog.

How many times am I reminded of you in the day, and an old, familiar aching burns in my soul. A burn that longs for you to be here, to be a phone call, a short drive away. And I find myself longing to be there with you even more than I want you to be here with me. Imagining you taking me by the hand and showing me around and not even being able to catch your breath for all the wonderful you have to share with me...yet, we have an eternity to share it...

Lauren, these strawberries! Have you ever tasted...

Oh wait, come quickly! I can't wait for you to meet....

Stop - the singing - do you hear it? Did you ever dream it could be ...

This! This, we must go right this minute -- it's so much fun, you've never had this much fun...

Oh Lauren, there is so much to see and do and taste and love and feel. If you weren't here to experience it, you would never in a million years believe me!

But in reality, here I am on earth. So I'll go on imagining. I'll imagine you can see me hold my baby girl and wonder with me, "Is there anything in all this world quite as sweet and pure and innocent and lovely as a baby girl?"

I'll imagine you're laughing with me when Mac sings This Little Light of Mine and instead of "hide it under a bushel, no!", Mac is emphatic that his light will not be hid under a bush "hell, no!"

Or that you're here to run your fingers through Fowler's curls and agree with me that they are sheer bliss, and we are never cutting that baby's hair. And that smile...yes, that smile. God himself painted that one on.

You're with me every time Amazing Grace is sung and, with tears in our eyes, we belt out "When we've been there ten thousand years ... Bright shining as the sun ... We've no less days to sing God's praise... Than when we first begun...."

I was reading earlier today about a girl’s ability to find and love things in the most unassuming of places. Some of the things she loves others think are frivolous, petty, silly. It reminded me of you. Not the frivolous part but the admiration for the beautiful found in the seen AND overlooked parts of life.... And I was reminded that you loved not only the beautiful but you loved what so often the world calls ugly. And isn't that exactly what Jesus did? He loved the unlovely. He loves me, and oh how unlovely I am. How much lovelier is He for stooping down to live as Love amongst the filth. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jenny. For showing me the importance of loving the truly lovely AND the unlovely. For teaching me to look for the overlooked and to love them.