Beauty & Suffering

In Dutch we have a saying: beauty takes suffering. I remember the uncomfortable nights as a young girl, when I slept with cotton strips knotted in my hair, so I could have ringlets the next day. They typically lasted half a day, before my hair was all straight again.
Then I started thinking that maybe there is more to this old saying than we think at first glance. My experience has told me the reverse of this saying: suffering makes beauty.
In our Western world we have this idealized vision of beauty with no wrinkles or blemishes on your face (at least for women). I've seen pictures of people in less affluent countries that have gone through suffering and being exposed to the elements and I see immense and intense beauty in these wrinkled and gnarled faces. These are faces that tell stories of lives lived under pressure, but each grin and wrinkle tells also a story of resilience and joy.
I encountered the same beauty in the faces of cancer patients when I went in for chemo myself. Sure the hair is gone, but contrary to what we might think, it brings out and intensifies the inward beauty of a person. And I've had many compliments about my face and that I have this glow...
As a quilter I get it; the last quilt I made involved a lot of cutting up and sewing together again. The technique is called "Bargello", named after the embroidered, wavy patterns on pillows in one of the musea in Florence, Italy. You start with cutting strips from the width of fabric of different colours. You sew the different coloured strips together in a certain pattern, and then you cut them again into strips, which are sewn together with another pattern. The end result is a wavy pattern. The more you cut and sew it, the prettier it gets.
Of course this theme of beauty from ashes and suffering we find all throughout the Bible and it is the leading story of our Christian faith.
So next time you look in the mirror and you spot a wrinkle or grey hair, smile and say: you are beautiful and your face shows a life well lived! And compliment people on their inward beauty shining through.