Starry, Starry Night
In 1931, Georges Lemaitre proposed a radical idea that came to be known as the Big Bang Theory. He postulated that our universe began with an explosion of space itself. According to Lemaitre, a combination of high pressure and temperature caused space to expand. The universe cooled, and the simplest elements formed. Gravity gradually drew matter together to form the first stars and the first galaxies.
We don’t usually think about the Big Bang when we’re gazing up at the stars at night.
We just think, “Wow.”
What I Need from You
As newlyweds, Gavin and I participated in a young-marrieds Sunday School class at our church. One day, the teacher asked us to share something we wish our spouse would tell us more often. Almost everyone said, “I love you,” but one shy girl whispered “I just need him to tell me I’m beautiful.”
“I just need him to tell me I’m beautiful.”
Her longing resonated with me. We all need to hear those words.
And I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of time in yoga pants and sweatshirts these last few months. The official name is “athleisure,” with an emphasis on the leisure. Some days, the only place I go is the grocery store or the gym.
At one, I’m in a mask; in the other I’m covered in sweat.
Beauty hasn’t been on my mind much lately.
“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”
And yet, these last few months I’ve met some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever known.
In this new physically distanced world we live in, I call them “overcomers.” They are navigating a flawed healthcare system, reinventing themselves with innovative work, and caring for their families with grace and grit.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
When my friend said she wanted her husband to tell her she was beautiful, I don’t think she meant she needed him to say, “You look pretty today.” I think she wanted him to acknowledge something far deeper. We all want to be overcomers. It’s the way of the world—the way the Grand Canyon was carved or the black sand beach of Hawaii came to be. It’s the way the Ice Age gave way to Niagara Falls and how an earthquake made the East African Rift Valley. The whole earth bears the scars of one natural disaster after another.
And we call them beautiful!
What if we did that for each other? Saw one another in light of what we’ve endured or conquered or dug ourselves out of?
What if we saw our scars, not as flaws, but as beauty marks that tell the story of our lives?
That couple from our class got divorced a year later. It was heartbreaking. And I can’t help but wonder if things might have been different had someone simply acknowledged the beauty that lived inside her. I never found out what happened next because we all sort of moved away and lost touch.
But based on millions of years of scientific data, chances are good that something beautiful is brewing even now.