Become Beautiful

“Look at your mother,” my dad said, “she’s so beautiful.”

My mother was adorable, but she was going through a particularly rough patch of life when Dad made this statement. After spending the better part of two decades raising four children, she'd gone back to work and she was tired enough from a full-time job and still bearing a mother’s share of housework and child rearing. As if that wasn’t enough, her readjusting hormones were less than kind to her skin, and she had frequent debilitating headaches. She was carrying extra pounds and retaining water – you get the idea.

Mom rewarded Dad with a grateful smile. I thought, isn’t it sweet how he comforts her, makes her feel better. Then I looked at my Dad, and then at the two of them gazing at each other, and I realized I had it all wrong.

The look on his face was one of total adoration, admiration, and love. When she looked at him, she reflected all that love back at him. My dad wasn’t just trying to make my mom feel better. It wasn’t even that he truly believed what he was saying. What he was saying was absolutely true. Because he loved her like that and saw her as beautiful, she was made beautiful. “Yeah Dad,” I said, awestruck, “she is.”

Flash forward thirty years. “You’re so beautiful,” my husband of twenty-four years tells me. I scoff. “Well,” I say, “I’m glad you think so.” He slowly shakes his head, a wry smile on his lips. “You really don’t get it – you don’t believe me.”

I’ll tell you something I haven’t told him, though. I am starting to believe it. Seriously, I know I’m not the homeliest woman on the planet, but neither am I a vision of classic beauty, and I have always been okay with that. Yet, when my husband looks at me, I’m starting to see that same look on his face that I saw on my dad’s when he looked at Mom. It’s not the lusty, gusty, love-is-blind look of our early years. Some of that is still there, thank God, but more and more, I see that look in his eyes that sees all of me, knows all of me, and finds it breathtakingly beautiful.

This is a crazy kind of love, magical. The words materialize in my head, what kind of love is this? Then of course, it hits me.

What kind of love has the Father bestowed on us...?

What kind of love is this? It is unconditional love for even the most undeserving, and it transforms the beloved. This love is different from the world’s love like a hug is different from a push. This kind of love is sacrificial – it is an action – I have always believed that. I am coming to understand that it is also a way of being beheld, and it’s how God sees us.

I am very thankful for my father, and my husband. It doesn’t matter, though, who you are or what your situation – young or old, male or female, single, married, widowed, orphaned – if you are His child, you are being gazed upon by the God of the Universe through amazing, transforming eyes of love.

God looks at you and He doesn’t see your flaws, your wrinkles, your screw-ups. It isn’t that He is just overlooking your imperfections. He looks at you and He sees what you will be, finally – His beloved, perfect, in Christ.

What kind of love is this? It’s the power to transform. Believe it. Become beautiful.