Thursdays, if I’m lucky, are Mimsy days. She takes an hour off work, I have an hour in between chapel and lunch, we each walk a short distance and we meet at Starbucks on State Street. We take turns buying drinks each week, sometimes we stay in the corner coffee shop, sometimes we venture elsewhere, and we talk. It’s fun, often hilarious, always encouraging, and every week I walk away refreshed and grinning.
I love Thursday mornings.
Today was no different. We sat in Starbucks and watched the sparse bits of snow swirling outside the window, and we ate peanut butter M&Ms and we talked about our experiences at Moody and the things I’m learning and the things she learned during her years here. She often relates tales of her Moody escapades, and her deadpan humor and the way she opens her eyes wide as she prepares to deliver the punchline leave me giggling breathlessly, regardless of how humorous the story itself is.
We talk about things we’re learning, things God’s showing us. We talk about things that make us sad, things that make us chuckle, and things that make us think hard. We sip our drinks and think about life and sometimes we look back at how far we’ve come, and sometimes we look forward at how far we’ve yet to go. Our lives are so different, and yet often so much the same, and it’s marvelous to sit and share with Mimsy.
This morning found Mimsy deep in an entreaty about discipleship and relationships. I was sitting across from her, sipping the last bits of coffee-tinted water out of my cup, when it happened.
“And when we’re close to people, and we love people like that, there is hurt…” Mimsy said, and as she said the word hurt, she pulled her shoulder in, turning her body slightly to the side as if protecting herself from an invisible and forceful blow. She said the word once or twice more, each time unconsciously punctuating her words with a shoulder-curling flinch.
She moved on, continuing her thought to completion, but I didn’t hear. I was stuck, held transfixed by her unconscious pantomime. As her thought process wound down for a moment, I interrupted her and confessed that I hadn’t heard most of what she had said. I told her about the beauty. Beauty in a slide. Beauty in a look. Beauty in a word.
And then we talked about something that’s been on my mind for a couple of days. I love seeing the beauty. I love that God has opened my eyes to see the little things, the nuance that not everyone sees, and that some people never notice. I love when something stops me in my tracks, grabs my heart, and takes my breath away.
But what am I doing with the beauty? How am I responding to the beauty? How am I turning it around and putting the focus back on the One who enabled me to see in the first place?
“The beauty that you see is a reflection of Him,” Miriam observed. And I think she’s right. I may not be able to identify exactly why something knocked the breath out of me because of its mundane beauty, but I can allow the beauty to point me back to God. God who is indescribable, wise, mysterious, and beautiful beyond imagination.
It’s not mere earthly beauty that I see; it’s a reflection of Him, and it’s there to point me right back to Him.
~Natalia
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