Beautiful

“From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise …”
– Psalm 8:2a, NIV

The other morning I stood in front of the mirror and picked over every flaw. The zits. The dark circles. The extra pounds. “I hate being in my thirties,” I thought. “Before I had kids I passed for 16 and had a celebrity-fit body, and now …” My mind wandered to the catty comments that had crushed my heart about my weight gain, my aging. I grumped about how hopeless it was to keep working out, about how nothing in my closet fit well anymore, if it ever even did! Why even put on make-up at all? I could never cover over all of my flaws.

I might have been lost forever in this negative, destructive train of thought, if not for the unsteady warbling of my two-year-old son. What was that he was trying to sing? I tuned my ears to listen, and heard his clear little voice singing a song my mother had sung to me as a child … a song I had sung to him over and over again:

“Beautiful, beautiful, Jesus is beautiful/and Jesus makes beautiful things of my life/Carefully touching me/Causing my eyes to see/that Jesus makes beautiful things of my life.”

The sweet words pierced my heart like a sword. Instantly, I joined my own voice in song with the voice of my little boy, and the darkness in my heart fled away. “Beautiful, beautiful” – that’s what I was! Beautiful. Because Jesus lives inside of me – and makes beauty pour out of my life.

Today, stop picking at your heart and see yourself as Jesus does – as your children do – beautiful.