Finding Beauty in the Ordinary

My children and I were walking around downtown Charleston the other morning and I spotted some front doors I had to photograph. On my Instagram page, momaboutcharleston, I have daily posts, some about homeschooling, some about being mindful but mostly about our hometown of pure southern living. On Fridays, I join in on the #frontdoorfriday hashtag and share my latest picture of a beautiful front door in Downtown Charleston.

Anyways, back to my story. So as my children and I were passing these old, dilapidated doors, I stopped and told my kids to wait so I could take a picture. They are very used to their mother taking pictures so this wasn’t a surprising ask for them. They know to wait before taking a bite of a meal from a Charleston Restaurant, they know their dad will take their mom for a drive downtown in which she will be jumping in and out of the vehicle, looking both ways before crossing the street, moving up the road while daddy follows closely behind. But when my children saw the doors I wanted to photograph, there were looks of pure confusion. My daughter asked me, “Why do you want to take a picture of these doors? They are falling apart!” She wasn’t wrong. They are slowly but surely letting age and weather take away their beauty. But when you renovate homes and purposefully look for beauty and potential, you can see these doors in a new light. My daughter came and stood next to me, looked at the doors again and said, “Wow. Those are actually pretty cool looking.” Once she gained a new vantage point, and took it all in, she could see the beauty I was envisioning.

Charleston is FULL of history. History we want to remember, history we want to learn from, history we never want to repeat. It has it all. I appreciate how this city is bold and appreciative of the good and the bad. We can learn so much from both! If history is erased, there is a bigger chance that it is repeated. And this town has had its fair share of both good and bad kinds of history. But the city is also FULL of beauty.

When I looked at those old doors, I started wondering what their history was. How old were they? How long have they been hanging on those hinges? How many different paint colors have they endured? In their dilapidated state, they were still intriguing and beautiful.

I want to teach my children how to find beauty in unexpected places. How to appreciate old things, historical events and places. How to see past some rustic and overgrown entryways and appreciate what they once were and what they could be again.

When Jesus looks at me now, He sees His glory reflected. He no longer sees me drowning in my ugly sins. He sees his blood covering me and making me white as snow. So undeserved…but God.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”

Isaiah 1:18

Are you looking for richness in the ordinary things? Take a stroll and purposely look for it. It may surprise you how much beauty there is in a seemingly ordinary place.

Don’t Miss Out

When we first moved to Charleston, I was overwhelmed with all of the places to see, good food to eat, and events to attend. I didn’t want to miss out on anything fantastic. I was almost pressuring myself to do all the things right away.

Part of this may be because we just seem to move every few years. As much as I didn’t want to leave Hickory, God had other plans for us. Maybe in the back of my mind I was thinking…I better do it all now because I don’t know how long I have here! Or maybe it was just because I have always been one of those people who wanted to see and do all the things. I honestly don’t know. All I know is I was pressuring myself and thinking, “Don’t miss out!”

This past weekend we visited family in Asheville. I was having a conversation with my mother-in-love in which she was encouraging us to see the beauty around us and be present for it. It had snowed a foot or more, and there were 16 family members under one roof. We hadn’t seen some of our family in over a year. Snow and family weekend? These are some of the things that I don’t want to miss out on.

There will probably be another awesome event in Charleston next week, next month, next year. But none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, so we can be wise in the here and now about how and where we are spending our time.

Are we noticing the beauty around us?

Are we giving ourselves time to pause and enjoy today?

Are we taking the time to be grateful for the present beauty around us?

Sometimes the hard times leave a huge weight on my mind and heart. I get discouraged and can very easily focus on all the things I should be doing, or I could be doing, or that I want or that I am anxious about…Yikes. That was a lot of I’s.

After we left family to return home, my children shared how sad they were to leave. They had the best time with their cousins and just weren’t ready to say goodbye to family. Usually, I want to “fix it”, make the tears stop…make it all better. But the Lord reminded me that it is okay to be sad sometimes. This too is when we can pause, and think…what a beautiful thing for my children to love and appreciate family like they do at such a young age. They understand that this time was precious, and it is okay to be sad about leaving.

What sort of beauty is staring you in the face today? How can we stop and take a moment to shift our focus off of our worries, concerns and desires and see what the Lord has laid out for us today? Sometimes we can only take it one day, even one step at a time. Some have gone through intense pain and loss recently. It may be a chore to simply get out of bed. Sometimes to think about an entire week or a month is just too difficult. And guess what? That’s okay. Let’s see what the Lord is going to do today. There are beautiful things and difficult things we may face today. It may not all be pretty snowflakes and fun, but it’s what is there for us.

I encourage you to read the following verses and pay close attention to the verbs used here. All the things God the Father does and is doing for us on the daily. If we have difficulty thinking of one good and beautiful thing, hopefully this will remind us of the good things that GOD does for us.

Psalm 103:2-5 says,

“Bless the Lord, O my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
    who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
    who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

Follow our family adventures in Charleston, SC on Instagram: MomaboutCharleston

The Alleyways of Charleston, and Life

A few weeks ago, when the grandparents were in town, my husband was able to drive me to downtown Charleston to look for photo opportunities. Let’s just say he was stopping the car a lot. Haha! It is not difficult to find beauty in the holy city. There are specific things I look for when going downtown but sometimes I get distracted by the other beautiful things I’m not necessarily looking for, too. (I call this the “squirrel!” factor.)

Looking for beauty has become an intentional thing I do each day to combat anxiety and depression but also to be more thankful to my Creator. I started doing this when we moved into our RV. We had just moved out of our home of five years and were living in a campground in Salisbury. We were parked directly across from a beautiful pond full of lily pads. It was a little wink from the Lord. Then we met some of the most amazing people I will probably ever know while living in Albemarle, NC. The love those people showed us for the few months we lived there was beautiful.

Anyways, back to my downtown photo stroll. So my husband kept having to pull over for me while I was constantly hopping out and snapping pictures. (He is a saint.) I remember while looking across the street at this beautiful home with flower boxes and an old car in the driveway, I was struggling because of the shadows in the frame. So I needed to move across the street to try a different angle. (You can’t just run across streets in Charleston so I needed to wait for a few cars to pass by.) During that time I turned around and saw this little alleyway in between two homes. It had a beautiful iron gate in the front, an American flag hanging from the second story and a fountain. It was like I had stumbled upon a hidden gem. So of course I snapped a picture of it. The picture does not contain the full beauty of that hidden spot, but a picture helps, right? Now when I see that picture I think about how I wasn’t even looking down in between alleyways on that street. Sure, there are some streets downtown where there is always more down the alleyways, but this particular neighborhood we were in just had so much beauty on the porches and windows, I didn’t even think to peek in between the homes.

Sometimes we can find beauty where we don’t expect it. Sometimes we find it in hard times we experience. I will never forget the morning of my surgery to remove the cantaloupe of a tumor on my ovary. We arrived at the hospital and I couldn’t get out of the car. I started sobbing. I told my husband I couldn’t do it. I was too scared. I had never even had minor surgery before, much less a tumor and an organ in need of removal so all of this was brand new to me. I will never forget him lifting me out of the vehicle to go into the hospital. It was a physical example of what I felt like the Lord was doing for me that day. In order to go through with all of this, He was going to have to carry me. I remember praying that as well. I let him know “God, I cannot do this on my own. You are going to have to carry me through it.” And He did.

When I got into the hospital lobby, my in-laws were there, and my pastor was there too. My parents had already come to stay with us and were home with my children. I didn’t know I was going to have all of this support in the hospital at the crack of dawn but I was grateful. I will never forget my pastor saying, “This is the worst part. The waiting.” See he had a growth on his kidney removed several years prior and could empathize with me. My husband still had to help me do everything. Change my clothes, calm me down, check me into the hospital. He was my rock. And when I think about the Lord being our Rock and our fortress, this is the kind of God that now comes to mind. One that will literally pull me out of the car and help me get through the difficult times.

If you’re thinking, well I don’t have that same picture of the Lord. Guess what? I didn’t either. I used to think He was there, but didn’t bother Himself with the little things in my life. That He was there, but had a lightning bolt ready just in case I needed to learn a lesson. After much therapy, prayer, and hearing God’s word preached and understanding it better, I can say that He is the most loving God. He cares about every tiny aspect of your life. He knows the number of hairs on your head which for me in my last year of my thirties is already changing daily.

Through His death and resurrection we can now look down the alleyways of life and see Him there. We can find Him in places we never expected. We can look back at events that seemed impossible to overcome at the time, and see His faithful hand. His love will always pierce through the darkness.

As we begin this advent season, we can rejoice in the fact that He came during such a dark time in history at the ultimate goal of dying for those He came to save. This is true love, friends.

Psalm 18:1-2 says, “I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.“

Please follow our family as we explore Charleston in Instagram : MomaboutCharleston

You can also hear more of my story on the Pause, Renew, Next podcast with my friend, Ginny Detweiler:

From RV to Coastal Living: A Conversation with Missy Stone