by Rachel Spies

“Consider the lilies – is the only commandment I ever obeyed” – Emily Dickinson

I am drawn often to consider how beautiful, how majestic creation is. Every spring when the wildflowers coat the fields of Central Texas in blankets of yellows, reds, pinks, and blues I want to simply spend an afternoon lolling away in their presence. I want to lounge near a blooming redbud, read a book in the shade an old giant oak. I find magic not just in sunsets or flowers blooming, but also in the smell of my morning coffee or the depth of an ink-navy night. Stillness, quietness, in the rawness of uncorrupted nature, that is where I can easily find God, his beauty complete, uninhibited, unstained, and on display.

Tonight my sweet daughter prayed at dinner. She has an artist’s soul, an old soul, a free soul. She understands the essence of a matter. She knows nothing about limits or constrictions or shoulds – she’s too young for any of that. She only knows her truth and her passions. So tonight she prayed, and it was a long prayer as it always is with her. She thanked God for every member of our extended family and their pets, living and deceased. Tonight she unexpectedly added, “and thank you God that mama is so pretty and so beautiful.”

I was taken aback. I wanted to correct her, tell her that we don’t thank God for being pretty. I wanted to tell her that it was too conceited, vain, narcissistic, to focus on our outer beauty. But I didn’t. I paused and just let it go for the moment. We ate. I thought. I kept thinking. Was it so wrong for her to express her thankfulness that she thought of me as pretty, as beautiful?

I want to pass down to her a legacy of appreciating beauty aesthetically. From mother to daughter, from artist to artist, I want her to confront beauty, to hold it, to experience it. I want to teach her that that art, nature, creation, smells and senses, all hold honesty in them and that it is truth that makes a thing beautiful. From an artist’s authenticity, her purity of meaning or stroke, to the truth behind a friend’s words, we can find beauty in the light of truth exposed.

At four, my sweet daughter has only inklings of these intuitions. She knows I am her safe place, her cuddle spot, her lap to curl into, her warmth, protector, feeder, bather, entertainer, her everything. She sees me as beautiful because in her eyes these actions make me beautiful.

The truth is, I have a hard time thinking that I am even pretty, let alone beautiful, most of the time. I imagine other women feel this same way. False modesty has become my truth. My truth has settled deep inside me. Outside deeds and inner character trumped all else. Scraping off the culture that insisted I be a certain standard was paramount.

But the real truth is that I am beautiful. The real truth is that all women are beautiful. The real truth is that we are made lovely and alluring and sensual and beautiful.  Just as God clothed the lilies in majesty, He has given us crowns of red and deep chocolate and amber and golden blonde atop our heads. He has covered us in skin as soft as silk and bestowed upon us jewel-colored eyes to see out of. He has given us cheeks that flush, laughs that beckon, and minds that create.

I no longer want to hide behind inner beauty, and I never want to teach my daughter to start. I want instead to simultaneously cultivate character and love beauty in all forms, even my own. This legacy of beauty, of considering lilies and waiting expectantly for bluebonnets, of thankfulness for them, is what I want to leave my daughter.