Beauty: How Much is Right for You this Season?
Issue #1, December 22, 2022
Welcome to the first edition of the Good and Beautiful Things Newsletter.
This week our college-age daughter is reveling in the sight of France all dressed up for the holidays. As she travels from Caen to Strasberg to Paris, she’s been visiting Christmas markets filled with the tempting aroma of hot cider and collecting handmade wares like a painted ornament of the Eiffel Tower. Around every corner there seems to be another medieval church dusted in snow and no end to the architectural splendor.
“It feels very healing,” she said when I pointed out that she’s getting to see so many beautiful things.
Many of us know what she means without needing to explain it any further. Maybe you haven’t been to Paris at Christmas but you don’t have to leave your homeland to find beauty.
A plum-colored sunset?
The splash of cranberry red when a cardinal lands on an evergreen tree?
Every heart categorizes beauty a little differently but I’m certain the Maker designed our hearts to respond to beauty: to invite a pause, our breath filling the boundaries of our lungs for the first time all day or maybe all week. The minutiae of the day goes momentarily out of focus and God calls to the eternity he placed in our heart, if only for a second.
Sometimes, though, if our hearts are raw and aching from recent loss or other difficult circumstances, beauty may hurt more than heal, at least for a little while. My dad passed away at the height of Nashville’s Fall plumage, after losing a particularly long fight with mental and physical illness. That October I couldn’t drive without squinting, my arm instinctively rising up to block the glare of the fiery trees. The beauty, with its stark contrast to the darkness inside of me, only seemed to magnify my pain.
I know a lot of people who are hurting right now from impossibly hard circumstances, from loss upon loss upon loss. For some, beauty may not feel like an invitation to healing right now. It might hurt too much. You may be too weary or too grief-filled to even notice beauty. If that’s you, it's okay to put up your arm to block the view. It’s okay to just get by this Christmas and New Year.
It’s been ten years since I said good-bye to my Dad and a few years ago I realized my ability to delight in Fall had returned. It happened slowly, year by year, as the pain receded until finally I noticed I was smiling at the tangerine trees again instead of turning away from them.
This Christmas, if you’re able to notice the Maker’s beauty in all its richness, may you receive it freely and may it be a little glimpse of eternity. If this is a season when you need to turn away from the glare or maybe take it in bite-size pieces, may you be kind to yourself and know that beauty won’t hurt this much forever.
Quote
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
From the Sketchbook
Favorite Finds
Podcast
Check out this conversation with Kate Bowler and Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity, curiosity, and the gift of solitude.
Book
Making Room for Advent by Bette Dickinson
Connecting Together
Is there time when it felt necessary to turn the volume down on beauty due to difficult circumstances? Feel free to share in the comments.
Blessings from the Guest Nest,
-Aimee
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