You are beautiful

I just finished reading this wonderful book called Little Lamb Who Made Thee?: A Book about Children and Parents by Walter Wangerin, Jr. He writes about being a kid, a parent of young children, a parent of teenagers, adoption, children with disabilities, grandparents, when your parents get older, and being a pastor of others. So really every aspect of parenting. It is a great book and I recommend it. One chapter he writes a letter to a teenager who has just attempted suicide because of abuse by her father. I wanted to share an excerpt from it because it is so good. It was difficult to pick what I should include because it was all so well said. I hope you mediate on what he writes:

Listen to me! You are beautiful. You are beautiful. If you think you’re ugly, you’ve let a fool define you. Don’t! Touch your throat. It is a column of wind and words. Stroke your forehead. Though moves through its caverns. Imagination lives in there. You are the handiwork of the Creator. You are his best art, his poem, his portrait, his image, his face- and his child.

And if the Lord God took thought to create you, why would you let a sinner define you?

. . .God conceived of time and in that instant considered the purposeful thump of your heart- and the blink of your eyelid.

God made galaxies and metagalaxies, the dusty infinitude of the universe-then filled your mind with dreams as with stars.

You are not an accident. You were planned. You are the cunning intention of almighty God. Well, then, shall you think ill of yourself? NO! You shall think as well of yourself as you do of any marvel of the Deity.

Please, my sister, do not allow a sinner to steal you from yourself. You are too rare. No matter what filth has befouled you, your soul is unique in the cosmos. There is none like you. Whatever thing you admire-a leaf, a little cup, a sunset-you are more beautiful.

Sleep peacefully, you. God loves you. And so do I. And so ought you in the morning light, when the dew is a haze of blue innocence. But sleep now, child, in perfect peace. You are God’s, who spreads wide, holy wings above you now.