Can you get beauty from ashes?

"He gives us, beauty for ashes..."

Isaiah

As I spent a weekend with a couple of my cousins and grandsons, I considered these words...

As I looked out onto the beautiful blue water of Laguna Beach, and the loved ones around me, all I could think was, "Beautiful."  In my view, nothing could be more perfect. I decided right there that this week's theme would be about 'beauty.' Not the skin deep kind, but the kind that radiates from within. A beauty that cannot stay hidden, even beneath the darkest cloth of mourning or veil of sadness. It's a beauty that is made even more stunning by the fires and damages that it finds it way through.

My cousin's and I came from backgrounds that often found us in the ashes. 

We've spent time together in much larger chunks since my son and daughter in law moved to the coast. The location provided us with the perfect option to bring our lives together again. Suffice it to say that our family histories contained a lot of painful experiences, tested by fire and dismantled through discord. But here we were, three women with grown children who longed for the connection we shared from our birth. 

And as we allowed the desire to grow as individuals to water the charred earth of family history, the beauty began to sprout.

I want to encourage you if you are reading this today, and sitting in the ashes. Inside of you, there is a beauty that can come of these blackened shards of life's remnants. You don't have to coax it out or fake it until you make it come out. Just water it with your desire to heal, and it will find it's way out.

It can't hide. 

That's how real beauty is.

Cheers.