Beauty in the Right Here, Right Now

In my beauty-seeking brain, work would look like this every day—all the pretty things inspiring all the pretty words on that page.

But my daily grind straight up doesn’t include curled hair or a southern coastal backdrop. It has aerie leggings, oversized Notre Dame T-shirts, messy buns, a makeup-less face, and I’m sitting with my legs in pretzel-like contortions, because writing is work; it calls for acrobatics and a ‘wild hair, don’t care’ attitude, apparently.

The good stuff comes from hard, messy stuff.

Anything I’ve written that’s ever meant something to someone had its origin in messiness—the grind-it-out-because-this-matters push.

The this-hurt-you-so-it-will-help-someone-else mindset.  The I’ll-burst-if-I-don’t-say-this confidence.

The things that matter most often come from the things that were scattered and un-pretty and lifeless-looking and even downright, ridiculously painful. That’s life, right? We’d rather hang out in the beautiful spaces that give us the feels—but the real stuff is birthed from the this-is-far-from easy grind.

If you find yourself in the heavy, painful lifting—and you’re rocking leggings with tangled hair, too—know that we’re in the same boat.

That growing process.

That daily pace that tempts us to quit.

That long season that’s going to mean something one day.

Because God crafts lasting beauty when we trust Him through the desolate places.

And what if we stopped longing for the neatly-tied-bow beauty on our circumstances, and we would stand firm in the process He’s got going on within us?

I think we’d discover joy in the right here, right now—the tough stuff. Because there’s beauty there too, if we look for it.