FRESH THYME
I grow tired, honestly, of seeing ads and posts and women talk about erasing all the fine lines. Oh, I understand wanting to halt the process of aging, I really do. Some days, I’m petrified about how fast time is flying and the next birthday on the calendar, but other days I’ll come across a different post. It’s a beautiful gray-haired woman talking about how we can embrace and cherish our lines, because they tell our story.
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When my husband was a little boy in elementary school, he was quite the artist, and lots of his work was displayed in the school. He has a memory of a visiting artist coming to the school and spending time in his art class, as she instructed and taught. He was almost finished with his piece, a fence and some grass and a skull…sort of a country setting. The visiting artist came to observe him at work and took a wet sponge and erased all of the pretty strokes he had made and created, and told him that the perspective was off…the sizing.
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​That act of erasing the lines he’d created with such precision, with just one swoop of a sponge, hurt his little heart and he stopped painting, and stopped his artwork. And he was good, and loved his craft! Couldn’t that teacher have instructed him in a different way, other than erasing what he’d worked so hard to achieve? I think so!
We work hard at life and the years roll on, and little lines appear around our eyes and our mouths, even at an early age for some. And with all the filters used now on social media (I use them, too!) we can make our skin smooth and supple and young-looking for presentation. And we can purchase all sorts of creams and even have “work” done on our faces to push back the lines for a while. But…is all of that erasing and removing hurting our deepest self, somehow?
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We’ve seen a lot of things in this world by the time we’re in the upper decades of life. We’ve witnessed births and death, we’ve seen friends come and go, we’ve watched so many sunsets and maybe a few sunrises, and we’ve seen joy on faces as well as despair…and all of that paints a beautiful tapestry on our faces. We’ve smiled a lot, hopefully more than we’ve frowned, we’ve tasted and eaten so many good flavors and spit out those that taste awful, and we’ve talked and talked and yes…our mouths have lines beside them.
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What if someone could walk in with a big sponge full of magic potion and erase every line? Would we stop with our faces? Would we have that someone erase sagging skin on every part of our body, all the spots that appeared out of nowhere, and set our bodies back to say…age 15? What would that do to the inner beauty of what we’ve become as we’ve aged?
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I just thought of my husband as a little boy and how he must have been crushed when that lady erased his masterpiece. And he just wasn’t able to recover after that…and certainly wasn’t able to recreate that drawing.
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Lines and wrinkles are also steamed out with irons or steamers, but then by the end of the day when we wear that perfect shirt or top, there are new wrinkles because we lived in those clothes. We sat and we rose, we ate and we moved, we carried children and bags, and by the end of the day we’re a bit disheveled from the experiences of the day.
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This new year, let’s look in the mirror and smile big at those lines that tell our story, and let’s not be swayed by social media to totally erase them. Sure, we all want to look “good” and feel good about our reflection in the mirror, but who we are deep inside needs to emerge through the wrinkles on our skin…doesn’t it ?And who is that person inside?
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I want to think about this more this year and start embracing life, and I want to learn to live for today and enjoy every moment. I want to see who it is that I’m becoming in the reflection of a daily life spent for Him…with his perspective…not an outsider with a wet sponge.
ANY THOUGHTS TO ADD?
DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT OUR OTHER FRESH THYME STORIES IN THE BOX ON THE COVER.
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