"Outward Beauty: Thoughts For Mothers Day"

MOTHERHOOD and BEAUTY are two subjects which have always fascinated me.  In fact, some of my best poems over the years were regarding those very subjects!!  "The Sculptress of Souls," "True Beauty" and "Her Heart Hears" are just a FEW...and from the titles alone, I trust you can get an idea of the "gist" of the poems without me reproducing them here.

     BEAUTY is something that has long been on my mind.  How often have you heard something like this..."A young woman was killed in that crash, what a shame, she was so beautiful"?? I've heard it (or something like it) MANY times in my 64 years and it troubles me.  (I mean, was her life worth MORE because she was outwardly "so beautiful"??  Would it NOT be "a shame" that she was killed were she....PLAIN??  Apparently so, in our super shallow society.)  There is nothing inherently WRONG with outward beauty, mind you...God created it...but it should be the ICING on the cake, not the cake itself.  CHARACTER should be the "cake."

     MOTHERHOOD amazes me because I've  known so many godly women willing to give up their figures, at least temporarily, in order to bear children and I admire them so much because our culture WORSHIPS a "good figure."  And in this decadent society where getting pregnant is now commonly described with the violent term of "getting knocked up," where babies are referred to as "baby bumps" as if they are "Wounds in the Womb" and where many ENCOURAGE abortion by who they vote for, to bear children in America today is a wonderful, almost BRAVE thing.

And maybe that's why MOTHERHOOD and BEAUTY are two of my favorite subjects, poetically speaking...they are so closely connected in my mind, you see.

The pictures above show singer JONI MITCHELL, as she appears today at age 75 and how she appeared 50 years ago.  (Thought they were two different women, right?? Perhaps a mother-daughter?? No, they are the same woman at different ages / different stages of her life.)

When I was about 15, I recall opening up one of Joni's albums at a friend's to read her lyrics and I might as well have opened a Playboy magazine.  There was Joni in her naked beauty, showing off what only her husband should see.  Yes, she was beautiful, but NOT beautiful....Proverbs 11:22 would say she was "as a ring of gold in a swine's snout...a beautiful woman who lacks discretion."  Not to pick on Joni, but she is a prime example of how outward beauty fades and why a woman who is PROUD of her outward beauty (or a man who worships it) is not wise.  In "Morning and Evening" just now, I read Spurgeon's words "Remember....all the flowers in the world's garden fade by turns, and the day cometh when nothing will be left but black, cold earth." I'm amazed when even DEAD female movie stars are idolized...do the folks who idolize them realize they are idolizing....dust??

Contrast this to a godly, modest MOTHER...she surrenders her body not to be SEEN by STRANGERS, but to be LOVED only by her HUSBAND and then INHABITED for nine months by their CHILD.  And the child has an eternal soul which "The Sculptress" helps to shape (hopefully, with her Creator's, and hubby's, help.)

THIS, my friends, is "True Beauty"...and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY tomorrow to all who are so blessed, and who ARE such a beautiful blessing!!