They say “beauty will save the world”, and I know it’s true. I know how beauty stands alone in the dark, in the quiet, and holds out hope for redemption to a world looking for a fix. I’ve held it while the world has slept on and spun round and out of control. I’ve held this kind of beauty in the palm of my hands, tiny and helpless and completely dependent on me. In the bend of my arm, the squeeze of my embrace, and in my lap as we crossed oceans and continents after our adoption, beauty that saves the world has been mine to hold.
Those first days at home are a special kind of quiet—not silence, necessarily, but permission to check-out of life, all the whirling world excusing your absence and even bringing you meals. I remember the first days with each baby and how tired, how depleted I was, yet how full. Life was a cycle of waking-feeding-changing-sleeping, and no one cared how the house fell apart. The dark of night or early morning covered some of the most tender times, as well as tears and frustration and great worries about tomorrow.
This is how Christmas feels to me. {Click here to read the rest of this essay at kindredmom.com.}
