Devotion 304 - gift

I am not sure what made me click on the link.

I am not a TV watcher and I never watch video via the internet, well… almost never.

I don’t remember the title but the words and the images have left an almost haunting imprint on my mind.

Perhaps that is why I like to read so much.  I like to read the news.  I prefer not to watch it.

I want to cast the characters as I see fit in my own mind.  

I imagine what they look like, how they talk and perhaps how they arrived at a particular moment in time.

But I was alone, my house was still asleep.  A fire warmed me from the fireplace and it was still too early to start my morning routine.  I treated myself to a devotion that crossed my inbox, and then I saw the video.

I clicked.  It was something that had “reality” in the title.  How strange I thought, don’t we hope to escape reality when we watch television?

It was a series of interviews.  

There were perhaps a dozen adults interviewed separately, one interviewer, one interviewee and one camera.  

Each person was given the exact same question, 

“what one thing would you change about your body?” 

My mind feasted on the idea, I was sure I could not limit my answer to one thing, so I tuned in, wondering how others would respond.

The men laughed and the women flushed embarrassment; it was obvious they didn't know this question was coming, but in seconds, or less, they each had a response.  All the people to my eye were attractive, well dressed; intriguing, yet all, every single one could answer almost without thinking as if like me, they only named the first of perhaps a longer list of flaws.

Then suddenly the subjects changed.  One by one the camera flashed to children.  Little, big, dark, light, each one posed before the camera and individually answered the very same question.  But there was one noticeably grand difference.  Each child, without exception was stunned.  There were giggles and smiles, but not out of embarrassment, rather out of wonder.  Why would they change a thing?  I smiled at their beauty and candor.  Some asked for fairy wings and super powers, but to change something they currently possessed seemed ridiculous.

Finally the last little girl took a chair.  Except for a tinge of red to her hair, she could have been me at that age.

She was pear shaped, my mother called it plump.  Her hair was pulled back in a single pony tail.  Her face flushed with the excitement of the moment, mine often looked like a flashing siren as a child and when she smiled, a mouth of shining metal smiled back.

I figured she was eight, maybe ten, close to middle school.  I remember those years.  Clothes didn't fit just right and shopping ceased being fun.

She received the question more pensively than the other younger children.  She thought for just a few more seconds than the others and then with the grandest smile and twinkling freckles, she said, “What would I change………  Absolutely nothing!!!!!!”

I wanted to applaud her.  She was in love with herself.  Not in a self centered way, but in a beautiful, God made me kind of way.  I wanted to reach through the screen and kiss her brown speckled face.

I shut off my computer in awe.  The span of time between my freckled friend and some of the adults in the first videos was no more than ten years.  What happens in those ten years? 

As I sat in the silence, my mind spoke with wonder.

 

How do we glance in the mirror with love one year and disdain the very next?

How do we look at our perfect Creator and draw His attention to characteristics we think He missed or flaws He added?

How does the world one day drowned out that still small voice, in favor of the loud screams of ugly, inadequate and insufficiency?

I had been so willing to sit in front of that camera confessional and admit I was not in love with all He had given me.  And I wondered if my daughters will one day do the same?

I turned off my computer as if it was responsible for my now uncomfortable mood.  I bundled up and walked in the cool, dark morning.  Snowflakes fell in tiny little specks as if suggesting the winter that is to come. 

I looked up wishing I could hold each one to marvel at the patterns but they disappeared in my warm hands all too quickly.  He designs each one, why do I think more of this design than the one that fashioned my mind, my heart and my body?  A cold shiver greeted the thought.

I returned home and began to get ready for the day.  I watched as my children readied themselves.  My youngest daughter flew into her clothes and asked me not to comb her hair.  I prayed I could bottle her carefree nature and whimsical spirit.  

She stares into the mirror alongside her older sister, but she sees no scared lip or a crooked nose. 

She smiles and sings. 

It was that evening she asked me to pray for no dreams.  Dreams scare her, and I obliged.  I asked if I should pray for sweet dreams, she declared a definitive “NO.”

I forgot the prayer, forgot her requests as I busied myself the very next morning. 

Ava, typically slow to wake, sat up and shouted, “I had a dream!-”

Fearful exactly how my prayers of the night before were answered, I asked one word,  “scary?”

Ava shook her head with an enthusiastic “No.”

Ava took her chubby hands; she held each of her cheeks and said, “Jesus made my face Mama.”  

The love of our Savior for His children is staggering.    What was viewed as a mistake in her homeland, what brought her to us, is nothing short of beautiful to her heavenly Father.  

I withdrew breathless at the comment.  The Word tells us old men will dream dreams, why would He not share dreams with little girls?

What if I, 

what if we eliminated all thoughts of our packaging- our bodies

 and focused instead on the Gift.

The gift of a heart to listen to His voice.

  The gift of legs to walk in His will.

Hands to do His work.

A mouth to edify and encourage.

The gift of eyes to see His glory.

How odd in the face of all that, that we would ever see freckles or waste lines. 

My little girl.  My scarred little girl with a crooked lip and collapsed nose KNOWS her Jesus made her face.

Beloved in the inverse world of the Creator ONLY the inside matters.

Why does the enemy pull the outside over our eyes and blind us?

Find the Father’s heart beating within your own.  I am convinced when we do it will change absolutely nothing about our outside but change everything about our vision; our vision of Him, and the beauty He molded when He crafted our souls.

 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Eph. 2:10