February 18, 2024

The other week, I drove into town on my lunch break and got a flat white from the local produce stop (I’m obsessed), and then meandered my way down the familiar, yet unfamiliar, streets of my city.

There’s a lovely interior design shop on the east side of Main Street that I’ve visited a couple of times. The first time I went was last June, on a placid Saturday morning, donning my new linen dress—hand sewn, fresh pressed, and clean. I saw a similar linen dress in the store’s own clothing section—one roughly 5x the dollar amount, and I assume 1/5 of the stress, that my own handmade sundress had cost. That was the moment I realized, with desperate sadness, that the beauty of this store was a few tax brackets out of my reach.

But, I went back to wander and window-shop, because the things inside are wonderful: wooden tables with worn edges, tapered candles, plates. Every bit is brimming with rich texture, welded metal, and soft, earthy scents. Tracing my way though the store, with cold hands cupped around my warm flat white, filled up my heart like few other things have during this cold, dreary season.

And that was my epiphany.

For as long as I can recall, beauty has beckoned me. It’s inspired me, woken me, and sent me reaching for more. Reaching: not in quantity, but in essence. In purity, in hope, and in an eternal sort of way. Beauty tugs at an existential nerve we all have. It gives us a glimmer of what could be. Of what we hope will be.

Of what is.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Great mystery of all mysteries, imperfect window into perfect things. Beauty is a small footnote in a greater story—a reminder, a reflection, a gift. It’s something true that can fill you up and take you over, gently leaving you a different person.

Beauty is searching for all of us, always. Well within our reach. Waiting, ever-patiently, to be mutually found.