Boy am I Getting Ugly!!!

It was a long ugly year. It was also one that I will never forget. I learned so much about ugliness this year and discovered pure amazing beauty as well . I learned that when we step out to reveal our own ugliness, we disarm pretense, we create a safe house in our presence for others and we find that there is liberty in expressing truth and ugliness. It is sort of like washing off the thick make up we had been wearing for weeks on end just to go ‘au natural’ with a clean and freshly washed face. Each wrinkle, sunspot, pimple, mole, in the light of day is beautiful in its authenticity. Kicking off the three inch heels we have worn to give us stature only to run barefoot, feeling the sand, mud, water, in-between our toes, shows us how alive we really are when we walk in humility. Exactly a year ago I released my book, “TO BE A MOTHER.” I was reluctant at first to tell my story about the abortion I experienced and the deep pain, regret, shame, guilt and remorse that I felt. But through prayer it was clearly revealed that this story of God’s grace and redemption must be told. The day before the book was released it dawned on me how naked I would be and how ugly the truth was in my past. I was so afraid and doubtful but knew it was God’s will for it to be written in all of its naked ugly truth. The best lesson I have learned this year is that God loves me as ugly as I can be and as ugly as I have been. I have stood in front of women (whether it is one woman or a crowd of women) in my ‘ugliness’ and reminded them that they are loved and of value because God tells us that we are significant in our imperfection and ugliness. We try so hard to keep the make up applied, the high heels on and the pencil skirts pressed. But sometimes our quest for beauty just makes us feel dirtier and uglier by worldly standards, when we refuse to let the scars be shown. Sometimes the most beautiful parts of us are our scars, moles and age spots that we try to hide.

I expressed my ugliness to a Mexican woman walking into her abortion and gave my testimony for the first time ever in bad Spanish. She ended up keeping her baby. She smiled and waved to me as she left the clinic. I felt beautiful even though I was wearing sweats and a baseball cap.

I told a crowd of women of the ugly day that I wanted to kill myself post abortion. Later, after the event, a woman volunteered to help me carry my things to the car. She confessed her own abortion. I was the first person she had told in 27 years. She cried. We laughed in liberation in the empty parking lot outside of a conference center. We both saw how free she felt once she confessed. It was a beautiful day even though it was cold and rainy .

This summer I was present when a baby was born that had been close to being aborted. I had shared my ugly story with the mother. She shared many ugly stories of her life to me. We both saw Jesus in the face of this child and felt beautiful even though we both hadn't slept in 48 hours.

I was present when a friend of mine had a nervous breakdown in front of my eyes. I don’t believe she would have been able to express her ugliness had she not known of mine. I watched later as she pulled herself out of it and developed an acceptance of her own ugliness. We found beauty in Christ’s grace that day….

I am a different woman now. I have been transformed through ugliness this year. I am so grateful to Jesus for moving the mountains inside of me to make me comfortable enough sometimes to sit in the ugly valley and know that I can make it up to the mountain top to view His beauty too. The ugly valley in all of its ugliness is sometimes where He wants us to be in order to show others HIS true beauty.

I thank God for surrounding me with women comfortable with the ugliness of this world. I thank God for friends like Carolyn, Traci, Leslie, Cindy, Diana who will pick up an ‘ugly’ HIV + child and open their arms and homes to them only to see God in their eyes.

I am grateful for my new friend Teresa who will go into orphanages in the Ukraine and hold and hug an ‘ugly’ child left to starve to death because he has cerebral palsy.

I thank God for Lynette, Sundy, Deborah who will shine a spotlight on the ugliness of human trafficking.

I praise God for Denice and Pam who are relentless in their passion to save the ‘ugly’ unborn babies.

I thank God for Rebecca and Madonna who hold their 'ugly’ down syndrome babies and love them unconditionally.

I thank God for Jodi who is willing to go to ugly places like Haiti and Uganda or advocate for the orphan in DC revealing the ugly truth about an at times flawed process...

Thank you Jesus for Eileen who with her relentless Kolfe Mama attitude unorphaned Solomon who is sure to breathe new life into America representing all of the 'ugly' street kids and discarded children in Ethiopia.

Thank you God for Elaine who has never met a teenager or young adult that she didn’t want to put her arms around and call ‘child.’ There are too many young adults who never know the comfort of a mother. I have to believe the world is a better place because she faced her own ugliness and was able to embrace their’s with joy and acceptance.

I am not the same as I was a year ago. The ugly truth has been a direct and fast path to witness unbelievable beauty that was unavailable to me when I tried to cover up my spiritual blemishes. My friends are beautiful with dirty fingernails that have dug into the messes of this world. I feel so much more put together these days as I walk with these ‘dirty fingernailed’ women. We dig deep, searching to find, as Mother Teresa put it “Jesus in disguise,” in the orphan, trafficked, post abortive and so called flawed children of God with their ugly diseases, birth defects and so far from ‘Gerber baby’ demographic faces. The women I call my friends these days are not the ‘pretty women’ type by worldly standards either. But I believe it is fine with us because our quest is not to fulfill an image of acceptance from the world. We are ‘ruined’ for the world and may never be perceived as beautiful to anyone looking at us with expensive designer rose colored glasses. My friends and their children are beautiful even if the world calls them ‘ugly’ sometimes…WHO THE STINK CARES!!!!! We are alive and more beautiful walking with mud in our toes, dirty fingernails and our messy, imperfect children. Such an honor to dance next to girlfriends like mine with their muddy feet and scars exposed for all of the 'pretty perfect people' to see….

Thank you Jesus for beautiful friends bold enough to run, walk, stumble and fall in a very ugly world!!!!!