It's Not Beautiful

El gently picked up the ceramic Elephant on the table that she painted last night.  She turned it around and around, investigating each brush stroke, each splotch, each line that turned an unappealing shade of brown due to her overzealousness with the paintbrush.  She finally put it back down on the table with a disappointed little sigh.

"It's not beautiful, Mama."

And you know what? She was right.

I can't tell you how many articles, essays, pieces of literature on how to successfully raise a child as an educator and as a parent.  It seems the growing trend of this little generation is to cater to their confidence with unbridled enthusiasm- even if it's untrue.

Now, I don't want to talk about the implication of the word beautiful.  How my little girl is growing in a society who paints their 12 year old cheeks and struts in kitten heels before they even need to shave their legs.  I don't want to talk about how beauty is relative, how it is learned.  How it can mean a plethora of things to any given person- all of those things are true.

The truth of what I am talking about today is, my kid put herself out there, attempted to do something that was difficult, and it didn't yield the result she was after.  To her, the product was not what she had envisioned it to be, therefore, it was not beautiful.

Sure, my job as her Mama is to teach her to see the beauty in the learning.  That each time she practices holding a paintbrush, the strokes will become smoother and more steady.  That she will learn how not to mix the wrong colors, and how to stay inside the lines. To tell her that it's beautiful to me, because it shows her beginning-her courage. But my bigger job is the one in her heart- to remind her gently that we're all not quite who we want to be.  That we try and fail more times than we succeed.  That things don't turn out perfectly- most of the time.  And that it's ok.  That's why we need a Savior.  And that's why we have him.

It's ok that it's not beautiful, because Jesus is.