Beauty From My Week

Loss, family, and answered prayers.

I spent the last week traveling across the country with my husband and two boys for a family funeral. We’re all exhausted, physically and emotionally, but it is weeks like these when the practice of hunting for beauty shifts from a spiritual discipline to a spiritual lifeline. I’d love to hear in the comments where you’ve been seeing God’s beauty in your life lately.

Beauty in Loss
Many people struggle to reconcile a good and all-powerful God with the depths of suffering and pain in our world, but I have found that the beauty of the gospel is especially dazzling in moments of loss. When applied to our suffering as a balm, rather than a bypassing, the blood of Jesus becomes even more beautiful. When the gospel is preached at a funeral, not to assuage our grief, but to affirm it, its power is unparalleled. My family has long days of sorrow ahead of us, but we also have this: “He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence” (2 Cor. 4:14).

Beauty in Family
Coffee runs, shared Kleenex, late night pool games, dinner arrangements, microwave mac and cheese, and changing dirty diapers. The ways we show up for each other in the hard moments don’t need to be showy or grand. It’s really the quietest acts of care that speak volumes.

Beauty in Routine
We’ve been traveling, responding to tragedy, and otherwise in transition since the end of May, and we are so ready to get back to our boring routine of zoom meetings and play dates and meal prep and LEGO building projects. Ordinary faithfulness isn’t always routine, but having consistent rhythms does sometimes make it easier to practice.

Beauty in Answered Prayer
God doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we want. That has been painfully obvious this past week, as we honored the life of a family member we all earnestly prayed would still be here with us. But it’s tempting in these seasons (for me, at least) to begin believing that God never grants the requests I make of Him in prayer. In His lovingkindness He made me aware of a very clear answer to prayer this week, one I’ve been praying for years. He graciously took my doubts in the face of grief and provided evidence to the contrary.

Beauty in Partnership
Next week’s essay is a guest post from

A.J. Swoboda

. I am so excited to share it with you. He has written about why the fastest way to Christlikeness might be discipleship in the slow lane. Introducing you to others who are putting beautiful discipleship into practice in their writing and work is one of my favorite things. I’m looking for a few more guest writers through the end of the year. Tell me, who would you love to hear from?

In pursuit of Beauty,