Beauty In The Forgotten

"I will not photoshop the Truth. As a means to appease the uncomfortability of truth truthfully speaking. I will not crop out what others prefer to go unsaid or resize truth for the purposes of fitting in your frame. I will not resize or rotate or flip it so when you first hear it, it feels less offensive. I believe scars are lessons learned so I won't even fix any blemishes. I won't adjust the contrast to make the message a little bit brighter. I won't add any special effects so the image looks more like me as opposed to Christ. See beauty in what you may see as ugly because Christ somehow saw beauty in me."

Those are lines from a poetry reading I watched online today. Pieces of me jumped hearing her tell her story, Beauty amongst the damages and scars and wounds. There is hope and strength in believing that to be true. All of us have wounds, we all have scars from our past. Some are deeper and more shameful than others. The enemy is a deciever. He likes to tell us that those wounds are dirty, that they should be hidden. The beauty of Christ is that exposes the rawness of those wounds and breathes God's breathe on them to heal and show others, "Look, this is what Christ has done."

When I was in college, I did a photography piece on Beauty in the Forgotten. The concept of Beauty amongst the Forgotten really resonates with me. I never realized the repercussions of a divorced family tangled with abuse and abandonment until I was an adult. I grew up between two budding families, never really being a part of either. Like a lost child looking through the windows at loving family, I grew up desperately desiring to be loved and apart of something deeper and bigger than me. Relationships were something I learned to separate myself from. I mistook numbness for healing.

Those scars and wounds are now a part of my story. I may broken, but I still see Christ's face. I DO ask myself "why?" Why God, was I not more protected? Why God, have I had to walk through that and stand helplessly as my sisters and brothers were bruised and scarred with me? I'm not sure I will ever know all the answers to my questions. But I take comfort in this; God sent his SON, his Son who was perfect and blameless to be bruised and abandoned, rejected and ultimately killed. God sent his Son to bear the burden of my sin. And God looks down on me, in love and says that this is not what he intended. This is not who he created me to be.

God shows me the beauty that is within me. God does not Photoshop the truth. He sees the scars, the wounds and damages and embraces them. He helps me disrobe my fears and stand before you and say as a testimony before you that it was worth it. Some of us won't hear it unless it's from somebody that went through. It was worth every single ounce of mental, physical and spiritual pain and I would go through it again if you would allow me stand before you and encourage you to allow Him to give Glory. Because like Paul, I reckon that the present circumstances are just. Not worthy to be compared with the Glory that shall be revealed in us.