Hide Your Ugly Baby from My Mom!

“That is one uuuuugggggly baby!” my mom would say.

“Mom!”

“Well, Lori, there’s no sense lying to those poor parents. Their baby looks like E.T.”

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“Like she fell from the top of an ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Uh-uh-glee!”

If we were from the South, my mom would be a charming character. But, we’re not.

If your baby is on the iffy side of adorable or if you’re sensitive, best to throw a blanket over her around my mom. I like listening to the comedian Rod Man talk about homely babies. He says those are babies that are “going through changes.” He refuses large photos of his sister’s babies because they’re not “living-room babies. They’re maybe keychain or wallet babies.”

Makes me laugh.

I, of course, had beautiful babies but they each went through funky stages. Before my son’s braces, his sister referred to him as “bucky beaver boy.” Likewise, before my daughter’s heavy, curly hair grew long enough to weigh itself down, my son referred to his sister as “big head.”

Neither of them likes photos of themselves from those awkward stages when they were, as the Rod Man says, “going through changes” but when I see those photos, I just see my kiddos. I’m filled with love for those faces even with buck teeth and wild curls. I see more than faces – I see a girl with spunk and a boy with heart.

We live in an incredibly visual age. We are the most photographed generation to ever walk the planet. Life in 2015 is like facing one long mirror and that brings out our self-conscious side to a pathological degree. I’m not a fan of photos of myself but I’m weary of the mental criticism and ego gymnastics I perform whenever I see a new image of me so I’ve decided to get over myself.

It’s pretty freeing. That’s me – flattering, unflattering, awkward angle, bad lighting – whatever. Other people see me all the time. The only person dismayed by my image is me.

It occurred to me that God knows exactly what I look like. When He looks at me, He’s not assessing my extra pounds, my boring shoes, my flat hair, or my lack of lipstick. In fact, I understand deeply what the Lord sees when He looks at me because I know what I see when I look at photos of my children or others I love. It’s similar except that God’s view goes even further than mine.

The Bible says this about God’s view: “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” I Samuel 16:7

God looks on me with eyes that see my deeper beauty (or lack of it).

2 Chronicles 16:9a says, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.”

Like superhero x-ray vision, God’s eyes pierce the surface to see into our souls. He sees a 360 of our souls and if we follow Jesus, He filters us through that cleansing lens.

My boy is like other boys, I suppose, when he’s far from home we get scant information from him. So, when he spent a year in Mississippi, I loved when one of the young women working on his Americorps team would tag him in photos on Facebook. I’d scan the photo of him looking – not at his appearance – but searching for signs of his heart. Was he well? Was he behaving? Was he happy? Was he at peace?

This is God’s eye on us. As we squirm through our personal discomfort with photographs or videos of ourselves, it can help to remember that God’s focus is on the snapshot of our souls. That’s our face. That’s our body. Move on. Don’t waste time on what will pass.

Invest less spirit in that will be returned to the earth. Instead, invest in what will rise, that which captures God’s attention, a heart, a soul made beautiful by loving Him.

Happy Mother’s Day to my beautiful, witty, smart, funny, godly, ever-loving mom! Isn’t she beautiful? I know that’s what God sees.

To every woman who reads this blog, Happy Mother’s Day! So many of you, whether you have children or not, nurture and care for others. Jesus sees you and celebrates you whether you’ve given birth to twelve children or you’ve invested in other people’s children or even if you’ve just made the planet a better place for the next generation. Happy mother’s day to you all. Here are the faces I love every day – my family!

Hide Your Ugly Baby from My Mom! http://t.co/KN42z7rPkb #MothersDay #MothersDayWeekend #mothers

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) May 8, 2015