I love the way my heart hurts from beauty.
Lightning storms. White flowers. Pine needles on a forest floor. Moss on a river rock. My daughter asleep with her arm wrapped around the pink bunny.
Last summer, as we drove through the mountains of Colorado, my five year old girl began to cry. Her seven year old brother was worried and asked what was wrong? She sniffed, wiping at her tears with the little hand I love to hold. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that sometimes girls have to cry a little when they see beautiful things.” That last word was uttered as “sthings,” with the remnants of her baby lisp making the soft sound I love to hear.
Her brother didn’t understand, but I did. I had just remarked privately to my husband the morning before, “The mountains feed my soul. Their beauty almost hurts me, but I love it.”
I can’t fully explain the urge to cry when I see the art God paints in the sky, hear the music He composes in the thunderstorm, smell the fragrance from His robes still clinging to a rosebud, or touch the softness of the children He gave me. I can’t explain it, but I do embrace it. It’s a perfect melancholy, that moment of introspection producing a touch of pain with the swelling of joy.
I think it may come from the sense that, while I have a taste of His goodness on earth, I don’t have the fulfillment yet. He shares it with me, but from a distance.
There will be a day when I will embrace beauty without that first instinct to pull back from it’s intensity. There will be a day when I look upon all He has made, with Him by my side, and whisper “it’s good” into His ear.
There will be a day when I myself will be pure beauty. Without anything else.
Until then, I will look at the “stingths” and cry. Just a little.
