I love seeing the world through Isabella’s eyes. I try to take a walk each morning and occasionally one of the kids gets up with me and wants to go. This morning it was Isabella’s turn and finally she’s old enough and tall enough that she doesn’t slow me down too much and has the stamina to go as far as I usually do.
As we walk, she sees things I don’t see when I’m by myself. I see a lawn overgrown with weeds. “Oh daddy, the people who live there must be very happy to have their lawn full of flowers,” she says.
I see a seedy, rundown house. “What a beautiful light shade of blue that house is,” Bella says.
I see an abandoned lot full of trash. “When summer comes this space will be full of flowers. I remember the wild roses from last year,” she says.
I see weatherworn garden gnomes. “I can picture how beautiful those statues were when they were new,” she says.
For Isabella, the world is bright and fresh and new and full of hope. It’s a place where you see the beauty first and ignore the ugliness. Or where what we define as the ugliness is really just beauty in another form.
The Lord sees us as a 7-year-old girl sees the world: Not for the ugliness we see, but for the beauty in what we truly are and can be.
