God built me
I like the way God built me.
She says it like it’s the simplest thing. The words fall easy, fluttering elegant, lighting on a twisty varicose vein that branches pen-thin across my thigh. I had been tracing the bruised lines with my finger. These spidery betrayers invade, cracks in the shell of me suddenly just there, like the glimpses of gray now flashing in wiry strands at the crown of my head.
And this is the point—as I retell the story—when my older sister-friends scoff, fingering the wrinkles at their cheek bones, telling me to just wait, because we all make so many comparisons. Very few of us can truthfully say what Riley says now, looking sideways in the mirror, testing the stability of the bun on the back of her head with her fingertips.
I like the way God built me.
I walk up behind her, sliding an arm around her waist, and I can’t help it, thinking I look pretty good with her in front of me. It makes me smile, because it’s a mother’s trick, hiding our bodies behind our children when we pose for photographs. In my mind, I catch a glimpse of an old photograph that stays with me—-a bouquet of flowers in every color wildly arcing; the gray-green eyes of an aunt barely visible just behind; that expression we love; the short, choppy hair; the soft, still-dewy skin deeply grooved with wrinkles. She had insisted we let her hold those flowers, because they were prettier. And now, I just want to pluck the arrangement right out of the photograph so that I can love the memory of her more completely.
“I like the way God built you too,” I say into Riley’s cheek, feeling her grin against the light weight of my kiss. A few errant strands of her hair fall feathery over my nose. “You’re absolutely beautiful.”
“Mmmhmm,” she says, the way she always has, and when I look up, laughter escapes with her smile, as though she exhales joy.
How is it that I’m just beginning to learn what she has always known, that beauty is wildly imperfect?
She’s okay with herself, more than that, she likes the way God built her.
“And I like the way God built Zoe, too,” Riley says, throwing a grinning glace outside the bathroom door to the chair where her sister sits curled around a thick book, absently twisting a length of hair in slender fingers. “And I like the way God built Mom, and the way He built Dad, and the way He built Adam, too. I like the way God built everyone.” She does. She’s okay with herself, so she’s okay with everyone else. She always has been.
And it’s not something she learned from me.
We say, in our middle and later years, that we’ve learned to be okay with how we are, but the truth shows up in the things we say, the way our gazes drop critically-heavy, the way we jealously deride other women for their better qualities or make shortcomings out of tiny changes in appearance. We’re not okay with ourselves, so we’re not okay with each other. I still wince when I see pictures of myself, and when someone compliments me I can scarcely believe it. Oh, let’s be honest: I even turn away from mirrors sometimes so as to avoid assessing my imperfections.
But not Riley. Show her a picture of herself and she just laughs, nodding her head. Yep, that’s me. She has no use for make-up, but she doesn’t find it necessary to critcize those who want to wear it. She never says, “OH, delete that. Delete it, I look terrible.” She’s not self-deprecating or insecure, and she’s also not jealous. She never notices that someone else has gained weight or lost weight or chosen the wrong thing to wear. She likes the way God built her, and she likes the way God built me, and she likes the way God built you. And I love that she emphasizes those words–God built—like precious gems cradled in her palm for safe keeping.
Middle age, and more and more it resonates with me that in Jesus would not entrust himself to human beings. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man (John 2:24,25). Instead, He lived for the testimony of God–You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased (Luke 3:22). It’s a testimony that spills from my daughter’s lips as the truth, not some pretentious platitude.
I like the way God built me.
Lately, as my prayers for more of God and less of me increase, as I ask for a sure centering on Him and what pleases Him instead of on myself, I have resolved to adopt Riley’s testimony as my own. I haven’t stopped trying to be a good steward of my body and my physical health, but I have started asking God to transform that voice in me that speaks when I see myself in the mirror or in a photograph, because self-deprication is self-centeredness, too. And seeking after the admiration of other people makes me a servant to their opinions of me instead of a servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10). It’s idolatry, and that’s the unpopular truth. His is the testimony I want to live for, a testimony that has little to do with this temporary, though wonderfully-made, tent. Simply this, to hear Him say, Well done, good and faithful servant.
Riley slides away from me, light and free, flitting airily away from her own reflection. And now unshielded by her elegance, I try out the words, tasting the organic sweetness of them, looking into my own green eyes in the glass:
Mmmhmm, I like the way God built me.
And just as quickly, she flies back to the door, my wise-free child, peering in.
“Me too, Mom. I like the way God built you, too.”
*~*
I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way. What you have done is wonderful. I know this very well (Psalm 139:14, NCV).
