Zest that Exudes

When I die, just put me in the box as is, or is it as am?  As I will be? 

Some women beg their friends to promise there will be no open casket when they die.  Why?  Mercy, they say, what if my hair isn’t done just so?  What if they put on the wrong color of lipstick?  Ew, what if I look gross?

As for me, I say put me on display for all to see.  Don’t bother with my hair or make-up.  Let everyone comment about how horrible I look.  Maybe people will finally appreciate all the effort I put into looking presentable at this season of life.

At the same time, tell everyone that for the first time ever, I do not care about my appearance.  Finally I will be free from my mortal body and sin nature that always cared too much how I looked and what people thought. 

Then I will be truly beautiful inside and out with no vanity or wrong motives.  Let my decaying body be a reminder to all who see it that I am not there!  Don’t waste money on embalming and beautifying my corpse.  Let my pale wrinkly old face serve as an object lesson.

I’ve shared before about my ongoing struggle against becoming a frumpy missionary, but as I grow older and wiser I wonder why on earth I fight the inevitable.  Money is precious, and worldly beauty is costly.  How can I rationalize the haircuts, the makeup, the clothing, and the shoes? 

Yet I look in the mirror, and I shudder to think what my family would be seeing all day if I didn’t touch up the results of a restless night’s sleep. Lord, help me to find balance!

This past week I met an exuberantly vivacious (is that redundant?) old woman who epitomizes true beauty.  I want to grow up to be her.  She radically changed my definition of loveliness.  True beauty has nothing to do with glamour, jewelry, clothing, hairstyles, or even teeth. 

If there were a missionary magazine looking for a centerfold of the most beautiful woman on earth, I would submit Valentina.  She has curiously split ear lobes, no teeth, failing eyesight, wrinkles galore, unruly gray hair, feet that shuffle, posture that stoops, and a voice quality that warbles and squeaks.

But you know what else she has?  Valentina possesses an inner glow, a zest that exudes joyfully from every pore of her being, even though she lives spitting distance from a cemetery and within sniffing range of the city dump. 

She is the me I want to be when they put me in that pine box someday. 

I want people to stand around and tell stories about my life, not about my decaying body.  I want people to smile and remember the real me, the radiant me who reflected God’s beauty and glory, just like Valentina.

What made me chuckle is that even my hero, Hermana Valentina herself, attempted to smooth down her long gray braids when she saw the camera, braids that were once carefully tied with red satin ribbons.  Vanity is an issue even among the world’s most astonishing beauties.

IRL* When I grow up, I want to be a Valentina who still acts young, not an old person trying to look young.

An Unforgettable Week

We used to tease my dad about his obsession with reading the Dallas Morning News obituaries first thing every day during breakfast.  His reply was always the same:  “Just checking to see if I have to go to work today.”  Being self-employed, he seldom took the luxury of a day off.  Dad went to work almost every single day until the day he didn’t.  (It’s been almost ten years, and I still miss him.)

The truth is that my dad looked at the paper to see which of his friends and acquaintances had passed away so he could pay his respects.  The older he got, he more funerals he attended.  That’s just how it goes.  My grandmother used to say that one of the worst part about growing old was outliving all your friends.

This past week I felt like my dad, only I was checking Facebook  (instead of a newspaper) each day to see if different friends and loved ones on my prayer list “had to go to work” again, or if they had been promoted to glory.  Happily for them, but sadly for those left behind, several died last week.

First was the death of my friend’s mother, whom I had been praying for since she suffered a stroke that weekend.  Then the team leader from a short-term group who came down a few years ago lost his battle against cancer, passing away that same day. 

A couple of days later, a car accident in Paraguay took the lives of a woman some of you may have met at the WOTH retreat last fall, Julie Kurrle, and her six-year-old son.  Then without any Facebook warning at all, a neighbor across the road passed away.  Finally on Sunday a Sonlight forum friend lost her precious little daughter, Megan, to leukemia.

Of all of these, the most tragic are the ones involving the little children whose lives on earth seemed cut short.  I cannot imagine the pain and emptiness felt by the parents.  But then again, those are bittersweet when we picture Jesus welcoming them directly into his arms.

What was truly heart wrenching was the reaction of unsaved loved ones when my neighbor, Joel, died.  My husband and I were in their home when the first responder finally gave up on CPR.  I have never heard such despairing cries of agony and loss.  The wife and daughters were wailing out of sheer hopelessness, not understanding the implications of Joel’s profession of faith in Jesus.

Such an unforgettable week points me again to the reason we are here, the reason we make such sacrifices (like being thousands of miles away when my little granddaughter was taken to the emergency room earlier this week), and the reason we have hope even in the midst of terrible tragedy and loss.

So many have yet to hear the reason for the hope we have.  Here is a sermon that reminded me why we are here, why we do what we do, by  David Platt, author of Radical; it reminds me again of God’s sovereignty.

Here’s a song to minister to your heart, in case you’ve had a week like mine full of sad surprises. 

IRL* If you're reading this, then I guess you have to go to work.