Women

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Mother was 37 when I was born. One of my earliest memories is how she would stand under our bathroom vanity lights (What a misnomer, they should be called humility lights.) slowly surveying her face, evaluating worrisome signs of aging and then moving on to the next feature. I tracked her eye movements from the crows’ feet at her temple, to her laugh lines, and then to her neck. She would raise her chin and cock her head to the right, delicately touching the length of her neck from top to bottom. I didn’t know what she was thinking then, but I do now. I am just about to turn 44.

When I was a teenager, I swore to myself I would never kick and scream about aging like some women. My mom fretted and complained angrily about what was happening to her. I would think, “Why can’t she just age gracefully? What is the big deal? Are all women vain?”

I guess I am. Occasionally, people tell me that I do not look my age. I say thanks and slough it off as if it meant nothing. But inside, I have thoroughly enjoyed the comment. The remark was a harbinger of happiness, if only for the fleeting moment.

I feel bad when I like being told I look young. It feels like I’m selling out to the media’s lie that youth is the pinnacle of life. I want to keep my promise to age gracefully. When I feel frustration rise about a new wrinkle or ache, I wonder if I’m behaving like a jilted woman on the Jerry Springer show, throwing punches into the air at who/whatever is nearby. If a woman is honest, she’ll tell you, it ain’t pretty to lose your pretty.

In my defense, I have always believed that I am more than my skin or clothes. But I’m also more than the feminist conception of significance, which would base my worth on my degree, my job, my output. In addition, I feel like I’m more than the roles that Christianity has traditionally endorsed: keeper of the hearth, wife, and mother to my children. I’m a combination of these traits and roles, plus more, as is every woman.

Deeper and more complex than any observation another person could make about me is a woman who wants to fulfill her destiny and display her truest self: who I am in Christ. No matter what falls apart on my body or who does or doesn’t approve of who I am or what I do on this earth, there is one who desired that I should exist and then designed me with a special reason. Often, as in 1 Corinthians 13:12, I’m only able to see myself as I would through a dim mirror, but as time passes, if I’m faithful to pursue his purpose for me, my destiny will become clearer and clearer, until the day the big questions are completely answered.

Until then, when I walk by a mirror and see the girl I used to be the and the woman I will be from here on out, I’ll remember that the mirror hides both my true image and the promise of an existence I cannot imagine. Then one day, I’ll see my designer “face to face,” and then “I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

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