When people tell me I’m beautiful now

(It just happened again when a perfect stranger stopped Me at Home Depot, it wasn’t any creepy sort of way)

I know they see Jesus in me so

I thank them and nod my head with a knowing that they are right, but it is quite trivial as I know it’s just a side effect of walking through hell on earth and still believing in heaven.

Trust me, you don’t want to be as beautiful as me! My beauty shines from the inside, My insides were shattered into a million pieces, it’s only because I let Jesus do surgery on me Over and over again as my heart keeps breaking that I can still stand and still smile and still be beautiful! I guess He does make beauty from

Ashes, I just wish there was another way! I wish my love was still by my side and still in my bed with me…

But it was the decades of walking with Jesus before my trial that allowed me to respond that way.

If you wait until the trial happens, it’s too late, you’re totally screwed!

My strength is also a result of Todd loving me unconditionally for so many years and my desire to honor him as I know he sees everything on earth and I cannot let his death be in vain.

From the time I was 14 years old, my life verse has been Philippians 310 “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death“