Making All Things Beautiful
…in my time
I used to call myself a “god hunter.” There I was navigating as a 30-year-old adult, facing a “post-church breakup” life where the divine felt untethered and I was coming undone. It felt like pieces of me were strewn everywhere in the wreckage. It took a very long time to put myself back together again. One-part rage and one-part heartbroken grief, I wandered and wondered. I was afraid. I was afraid that by stepping off into the wild unknown I would lose my center. But what happens when your center is a belief system constructed on faux everything?
I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere between there and here, I stopped living afraid and broken. I cannot recall all the steps I’ve taken to get here in the present, but I do know that I learned how to see. I learned how to notice the beautiful and to take up good things that feed my soul.
Memory Glimmers
When I was a little girl, we would take empty milk jugs up the hillside behind my grandparents’ house to gather black raspberries. Our fingers would stain red like wine, as we plucked and gathered gallons of fruit. Stomachs full, we’d trudge home with our ripe treasures. Pappy would make his mother’s homemade pie crust and filling. It’s easy in my 40s to imagine her hands placing those pies out to cool. It’s another one of those ancestor rhythms I am slightly obsessed with at the moment.
These are the memory glimmers in my life of four decades. I remember the glimpses of little beautiful things. The smells, the sounds, the tastes. The sweat behind my knees as I rode in the backseat of the family’s Dodge - legs sticking to the vinyl upholstery in the summer heat. Running bare foot across the pool deck. Sibling laughter. Friends playing. The terrified screams and pain at a bee’s sting. He was simply attracted to the sweet corn dripping down my leg as I feasted at grandma’s picnic table. I was simply terrified of his stinger.
Life is the weird rhythm of the things that grow us, groom us, take ahold and mold us. We’d hunt lightning bugs in the dark - as they lit up the whole yard. We’d lay on our backs in the front yard of the ranch-style house on the hill. With the smell of summer and chlorine on our skin, we were counting stars and holding space in the present.
Maybe I have always been a wonder hunter.
Making All Things Beautiful… Eventually
This year we started a garden in the backyard. It’s the first summer in a long time where the fibromyalgia pain isn’t winning. That doesn’t mean it is gone. That just means they found meds that work for the moment. I wrote about my garden adventures here. I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to work through by getting my hands in the soil. All I know is that this spring I had this strong push to not wait for “someday” when my body is pain free, my budget is unlimited, and the back yard is ready. I have this tendency to push it off waiting for ideal conditions and timing.
When if I stopped waiting for perfect, I’d notice that all conditions are ripe for making beautiful.
Because life is most often about making all things beautiful… in my time.
When you’re raised in Evangelical faith, your default is God’s will and God’s timing. We are told His will is perfect and His timing is perfect. It limits our ability as human beings to question it - the timing, the will, and the end results. Being raised around people storing up “treasures” for a someday eternal reward… makes it difficult to learn how to live in the present with awe. I think I watched all those wise grownups searching for something and believing their god would supply it. When really - they had so many of the tools they needed to live an abundantly good, wholehearted life already in their possession. They didn’t need a Divine mandate to go forth and spread a message of good news.
Life isn’t a get rich quick scheme. We aren’t meant to be like dragons hoarding a treasure. I believe we should be beauty hunters in the now. Seeking the good. Cultivating wonder. Wandering widely… sitting at the feet of silence. Balancing hope with holy terror.
I’m hunting beautiful this summer. I’m also cultivating beautiful everywhere I touch. It’s a whispered mandate from my ancestors… grow it. create it. see it. share it. Plant seeds of beautiful… and watch it grow everywhere.
Jessica
6.15.25