Fierce Beauty Read online

  Thankfully, when it comes to our King’s acceptance of us, it doesn’t matter how we feel. All that matters is what is true. Our feelings can change from moment to moment, yet the truth of His Word and how He feels about us remain the same forever: “Trust yourself to the God who made you, for he will never fail you” (1 Peter 4:19).

  Our King loves us unconditionally. To prove it, He’s prepared a way for us to live in His house—filled with His love—forever: “God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love.… We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in him. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them” (1 John 4:9–10, 16).

  We might lose sight of Jesus, but He never loses sight of us.

  Friend, there is no wilderness of despair so vast that His hope cannot reach. There is no depth of pain so deep that His peace cannot find. There is no anguish of soul so great that His love cannot conquer. There is no place you can go where His saving grace cannot redeem you. All that He is and all that He offers to you is as near as your lips and your heart. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

  Our loving and merciful Father is always standing by, ready to lead us home.

  Editor’s Note: Read more about Sue in “Friendship,” chapter 20 of Kim’s book Bridge Called Hope.

  THE WARRIOR

  13

  THE CHOICE

  Her Crown for His Sword

  It was late evening, and I was still working on a laptop in my secluded lookout on the crest at our ranch. Long gone was the golden glow of the setting sun’s last rays. In its place, as if on a timeless theater stage, the dark sky had silently ushered in the twinkling glow of countless stars. Hardly aware of the beauty above me, I was captivated by a scene playing out in my mind. Surging forth like a primeval play was the image of a solitary woman surrounded by dark shapes, preparing to make a mortal choice …

  The woman stood in the dim light. Her hair was blowing gently in an unseen breeze. Her feet were wide apart, her weight balanced evenly. She narrowed her eyes on the objects before her: a golden crown in her left hand and a silver sword in her right. She repeatedly glanced at first one item, then the other.

  Suddenly, purposefully, she looked straight up.

  Evil curses began filling the air. “You can’t do it. You’re too weak!” hissed one shadow. “You deserve to stay where you are!” cried another. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”

  Seemingly oblivious to the voices, the woman lowered her chin and blinked. As she studied the crown again, sliding the forefinger of her left hand along the edge of an emerald, she smiled. Voices seethed all around her: “Yes! Yes, you love this!” She turned the crown upside down and examined its rim, the golden sphere that for so many years had rested upon her head.

  The woman’s smile slowly twisted into a dark frown.

  Her next thoughts came from the deepest corner of her heart, from a place of pain and rushing awareness, so powerful that they filled the air as if she were speaking aloud:

  “This exquisite crown would guarantee me the admiration, acceptance, and honor of men. It would also unite me to a life of serving … myself. By choosing it, I would be bound to a public life of praise and a private life of purposeless, selfish ambition. I would reign as a princess, rule my own life, and become my own god.” Evil murmurs of agreement and praise rose around her like blinding black smoke.

  The woman turned her attention to the sword in her other hand.

  “This ordinary sword would promise a life of ongoing confrontation, rejection, and ridicule by many. It would also bond me to a life of serving others before myself. By choosing it, I would become a servant of the Most High King, bound to a public life of allegiance to Him and a private life of love, peace, joy, and eternal purpose.”

  A slow smile spread across the woman’s beautiful lips. Her smile increased in brilliance until it split into honest, energetic laughter.

  Holding what once held her, the woman extended her left arm. Then she opened her hand and let the crown fall.

  Wicked and foul screams shrieked all around her. “No! No! Noooooo!”

  The crown dropped heavily. It bounced on its lower rim and turned over onto its glittering side. The golden sphere rolled in a lazy semicircle, its faceted gems flashing in multicolored radiance, until it finally came to a stop.

  The woman gazed at the dazzling former prison that she had lived most of her days building, rationalizing, defending … and worshiping. Demonic witnesses held their breath.

  What she saw for the first time was just how much of her life had been spent enslaved within the crown’s indulgent golden bars. Around her, more vile blasphemies spewed out of the darkness. Staring at the lustrous hell she had once embraced, she smiled again. This time it was a knowing grin of righteous justice.

  She realized that as long as she wore this crown, she was already dead.

  But it didn’t have to be so. This was not her end. It was her beginning.

  Her great enemy had used this decadent fortress of selfishness to encircle and captivate her thoughts, control her actions, and nearly destroy her life. She knew that in all fairness the moment had come to return the favor. With a determination for retribution reserved only for demonic hordes, she breathed through clenched teeth, “It’s time for payback!”

  The woman lifted her foot over the crown and stamped it again and again, crushing the crown into what it had always been—a radiant pile of trash.

  A hideous chorus of screams shrieked all around her. The darkness that veiled the woman instantly began to burn away in the presence of a growing light that emanated from her chest. Right before the narrowed evil eyes that encircled her, the woman was being transformed.

  After a last devastating blow with her foot, she seemed satisfied with the complete destruction of what had nearly destroyed her. Pleased there was no surviving portion of the crown that could be resurrected, the woman stepped over it. She pushed back her hair, wiped her brow, and looked up once more.

  The woman raised the point of her sword as high as she could, drew in a massive breath, and shouted in a voice loud enough for the heavens to hear, “For the King alone!”

  Instantly white-hot light pulsed from the center of her torso. Its blinding flash scattered the black swarm around her. The brilliant glow spread like an accelerated sunrise through her entire being. Once the radiance reached her perimeters, it began to build. As it continued to gather intensity, a deafening crackle filled the air. What looked like her skin began to fracture as if it were sunbaked mud. Each crack grew wider until her covering was pulled so tight that it strained to hold her.

  Finally, in a series of sharp snaps, her exterior exploded in a rancid hail of filmy gray scales. Gone were the slimy, man-made attempts at creating beauty. Gone was the pride; gone was the fear; gone was the selfish justification. Gone was the princess.

  In her place stood a warrior.

  14

  THE SMILE

  A Solitary Strand of Hope

  Several years ago someone I love very much shared with me an account from her life, one that has since changed mine.

  On a five-day canoe trip through the Okefenokee Swamp on the Georgia-Florida border, Misheal and I paddled down what seemed a long-forgotten waterway. We set out, two ponytailed explorers, with several dry bags filled with our gear and enough food to last the length of our trip. Because the swamp is a wildlife reserve, it is also a haven for thousands of American alligators. We entered their black-water kingdom cupped in a sixteen-foot canoe. Our conversation meandered with the same unhurried luxury as the river upon which we traveled.

  I encouraged my friend’s heart with the news that no one venturing into the Okefenokee has ever been seriously injured by an alligator, in part because all adventurers are required to paddle a specified distance of up to twelve miles a day to reach a series of elevated platforms. The raised floors w
ere designed to give travelers a safe place to pitch their tents at night. Each wooden campsite rises several feet out of the water and above the reach of cruising alligators. Twenty feet long by twenty-eight feet wide, these stages are among the few places in the swamp where the gators cannot climb.

  Having made this trip before, I knew the inhabitants of this wilderness grow to approximately fourteen feet in length and have a mouth lined with dozens of prehistoric-looking teeth. Backing those teeth is a set of jaws that have produced one of the strongest bite pressures ever recorded. With that bit of information firmly in mind, combined with the understanding that these ancient predators are primarily nocturnal hunters, locating our platform before dark each day was always a high priority. Actually, as fearsome as they look and truly are in their habitat, most alligators are very shy. Other than those who’ve been fed by tourists, they do not naturally seek interaction with humans.

  Since it was my friend’s first trip to the swamp, I wanted her to be in the front of our canoe so she could see, without distraction, the matchless beauty this unique setting has to offer. Selfishly, I also wanted to be the steersman in the back of our boat so I could see her reaction to each miraculous wonder God had stowed within this hidden place.

  Perhaps lulled by the magnificent, embracing arms of the cypress trees overhead or the intense privacy of utter silence, it was within this sanctuary that Misheal’s remarkable story began to emerge.

  After several days of navigating the swamp and many alligator encounters, we paddled on in silent synchronization. Our words wandered as aimlessly as the brilliant blue dragonflies that danced around us. Eventually our dialogue moved toward the difficulties of our childhoods. Once we rounded this conversational bend, I observed a change in my dark-haired friend. Her back and upper body subtly stiffened, and her voice thinned. Clearly, our words were nearing something very painful in her past.

  My mind extrapolated from these changes the image of a frightened child. The little girl I envisioned had her knees drawn up tightly, her face buried between them. With her slender arms wrapped around her legs, she squeezed with all her might. This cringing child was trying to fit into a smaller space than she physically occupied.

  I realized that for most of her life, Misheal had hidden in plain sight. Yet on this day in our canoe, with every slow, courageous word she spoke, fear started to release its awful grip on the little girl it controlled. Like the pure white water lilies that our boat glided through, the beautiful grown woman before me began to unclench, breathe deeply, and open, petal by flawless petal, into a precious, perfect bloom.

  With her black ponytail brushing against the deeply tanned skin of her back, Misheal shared about her troubled and violent home life. Things in her outwardly perfect family became so tumultuous and threatening that—without warning—the house of cards came crashing down. I continued to listen in ever-deepening sorrow as she recounted how her life and mine were joined by the experience of having our families torn apart.

  Finally her home life became so terrifying, so dangerous, that law enforcement officials intervened. At the age of fifteen, she was taken away from the only home she had ever known. In the blurring aftermath she was literally dropped into a new home, with new parents and new surroundings many miles away. My friend lost her beloved mother, her family, her home, her confidant, her friends, her school, her peer group, her neighborhood, and all that was familiar.

  In a single day she lost everything.

  It was upon this unfamiliar skeleton that she was expected to build a new life. This devastating event took place in the winter, in the middle of the school year. As if nothing had happened, the following Monday she was trundled off to a new high school. Completely alone and burdened with an armload of books, she walked down hallways she’d never seen before.

  My friend conceded that going to a new school is hard for anyone. But since it was already halfway through the year, all the peer groups were already tightly knit and definitely not in need of a new, broken member. Misheal was alone.

  Overwhelmed by a crippling combination of acute shyness and mind-numbing grief, Misheal didn’t have enough emotional strength even to try to build new friendships. Without question, this was the darkest season of her life. She was caving in, and no one seemed to notice or care.

  In the canoe Misheal paused to look up into the elegant canopy of cypress limbs. Ten-foot Spanish moss streamers wafted in the lazy breeze as if encouraging her to continue speaking. Misheal seemed to be looking for something, perhaps the right words, as she pondered their swaying invitation. Finally her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath and steeled herself to press through her pain.

  Misheal recalled how, at that time in her life, she had been reduced by her anguish to little more than a hollow shell. Too weak to cry out for help, she simply cried. What was most deeply etched into her memory was that at the end of her first day in the new school, she realized no one had spoken to her. No one had even looked at her.

  No one.

  One day in the new school became two, then a week, then a month. Still, not one person engaged her in conversation or even looked her way. She was dying inside, and no one cared or even knew who she was.

  Eventually, two months went by, and still not one person had spoken to her; not one person had even looked into her face—not one!

  That’s when Misheal made her decision. It was time for her misery to end. She was sitting in the back row of her fourth-period math class when she came to this conclusion. She reasoned that no human being should suffer like this. In order to make the hurt in her heart stop, it made sense to her that this would only be possible … if she just made her heart stop.

  At that grave moment she decided to go home and end her life.

  Once Misheal crossed that bridge emotionally, it all seemed so logical. Her anguish would finally cease. She would be released from her pain. She found unexpected peace in this choice. She knew that among these merciless halls, she was nothing more than a dark-haired phantom. Although highly intelligent, she didn’t feel valuable enough to engage others in conversation. Though stunning in appearance, she didn’t feel appealing enough for others to even see. She would end her life and never be found in these forsaken corridors again.

  No one will ever know that I died, she thought, because, truly, no one ever knew that I lived.

  With her decision in place, Misheal allowed her attention to wander to the intermittent showers outside her classroom window. She wondered if the gray weather was mourning with her. Then the bell rang, ending the last math class she would ever know. She gathered her books and looked up at the classroom doorway as she walked beneath its tired frame. It felt strange to think she would never pass through this doorway again. Even more strange was that this revelation did not make her feel sad.

  Misheal was joined in the hallway by a thousand other milling students seeking to steer through the same river of humanity. Carrying her books close to her chest, as she had for weeks, she drifted unseen through the churning mass.

  Without warning, she was hit hard by a boy on the losing end of a shoving match. The force of the impact slammed her knees against the floor. Her armload of books splattered across the filthy tiles, hitting with such violence that they bounced into open, crumpled pages.

  Careless feet marched over everything that only moments ago had been held safe in her arms. Tossed about beneath the dirty stampede were her composition books, pens, assignments, and notes. From her knees she watched in stunned silence as each item was stamped with the grimy, wet tread marks of the herd that trampled over them. She felt just like her broken, trodden things, cast beneath the uncaring feet of the world.

  No one reached out to her. No one offered to help her up. No one seemed to care. Believing this was an accurate picture of her life, she shuffled through the stampede and, piece by piece, retrieved the soiled and tattered remnants of her things.

  The incident and the callous response by her schoolmates confirmed
to Misheal that she was making the right decision. Her prison of shyness was the only fragile wall that kept her tears from spilling over into this cold, indifferent corridor.

  Trying to outrun her urge to cry, she gathered her belongings as quickly as she could and began walking. Glancing up, she noticed that a blond girl on the other side of the hallway was watching. Apparently she had seen the entire episode. Their eyes locked. Misheal was certain that at any minute the blond girl would burst out laughing or point and jeer.

  Yet she did neither.

  Instead, from the opposite side of the hallway, intense blue eyes held deep brown eyes. As Misheal walked, the gap between them closed.

  Finally, just as the two girls passed, the blond girl did something unexpected.

  She smiled.

  Misheal followed the warmth of that smile as far as the rotation of her neck would bear. She couldn’t believe it. Was the blond girl really looking at her? What did she mean by that smile? Was it sincere? Was it born out of care—or pity? On the bus ride home, these questions plagued her crushed heart.

  Finally the dilapidated school-bus doors opened, and the broken girl stepped out. As she walked the short distance to her new home, she reaffirmed her commitment to her earlier decision. This was the only way to make her pain cease. It was the only way she knew to find lasting peace.

  Inside the house Misheal gathered the implements she would need to carry out her intentions. With everything in hand she went to the place she had chosen and prepared to proceed with her plan. Then she knelt on the floor.

  Cradled in our canoe on the Okefenokee, my friend stopped her account.

  I don’t think I realized until that moment that I had been holding my breath, as perhaps the angels that surrounded a hopeless young woman on that devastating day had done.