Pretty

I hope Kit won’t mind me using a picture of her new necklace (she has such good taste) but this is one of the things I tell my girls a lot.

It reminded me of a girl that I used to to church with when I was teenager. She was a little older and I didn’t know her real well.

She combed plain brown hair
from the side to cover the top of her head (I never did hear why). She had a nose that looked like a bulb on the end. To top that all off she dressed poor. I don’t think her folks had much. But she always smiled warmly when she saw me, was clean and tidy, and I knew she tried hard to be good.

After high school I went home one weekend and went to that church. I noticed her sitting beside a pretty nice looking fellow. After the meeting I found out it was her fiancé. I was like: what?!!

A few months later I attended their reception and watched that same guy stand at the head table and tell everyone how privileged he felt when she consented to his marry him. He also said he knew a lot of folks didn’t think she was pretty but he did.

Then years later I sat behind a woman at church sitting on a bench with some happy looking, reverent children. In fact it was the little boy who was sitting there with his head on what was obviously his mother’s shoulder that attracted my attention. He looked up at her with a look on his face that you don’t very often see on the face of a 9 or 10 year old boy. He loved her, alot.

After the last amen and people started leaving the chapel this mother stood up and I recognized that bulbous nose. The clothes she wore were modest but nice and her hair that was once so laughable was now growing normal and actually it looked really nice.

She recognized me too and I received that same warm smile before she was tugged away by the hand of a pretty little girl that had the same nose as her mom.