When Life {and Wrinkles} Keep on Coming

One year ago I wrote a post on the reality of wrinkles.

Fast forward 1 year, when life has heaped on more joy, stress, suffering, learning, more freckles-turned-age-spots, and of course, more wrinkles.

I’d be lying if I said wasn’t still tempted by sparkly, smoothing filters, products & treatments touting age-defying magic, the pressure to hit the pause button on this gradual process of aging.

But I also know that this is temptation over truth. Illusion over reality. Superficiality and pride over authenticity & wisdom enough to consider the long view.

So I’m reminding myself of truth today: my life-lines are the visible manifestation of the sometimes invisible crucible of life experience — a lifetime of moments layered upon years of building character, strength, faith, & wisdom.

It’s hard to withstand the world’s pressure to conform & compete in the pageantry of physical “flawlessness” as a prerequisite for acceptance; but peeling back the layers reveals the heart of the matter: denying, altering, erasing the full essence of who I authentically am, simply in order to believe I am beautiful and lovable — that’s not who I’m meant to be.

I ache to be the kind of woman I admire — a woman who embraces the divinely-inspired wonder she is while knowing that true and lasting beauty, inside and out, is simply the purest reflection of God’s love. {Like Mother Teresa - I marvel at the beauty and grace she radiated!}.

These life lines also remind me that age is a privilege denied to far too many. I want to keep living life & learning love as long as God allows me—despite the fact that this means growing older & inevitably *looking* older—till my body is worn through and worn out. I want to say yes to the authentic beauty of body and heart and soul, to being continually more refined and sanctified, inside and out... with the hope of someday being a beautiful, lovable, wrinkly old saint myself.