Beauty, Part One: Revelation
This week, I stood in the shower with tears running down my face.
The pain in my body had reached a height I hadn’t felt before. I was weak, doubled over, and praying. Praying for what? I’m not sure exactly.
Relief, maybe.
Freedom.
Mostly, I found myself repeating words from Scripture that have been carrying me for a while now: “Your grace is sufficient. Your power is made perfect in my weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9)
As the water ran over me, one question kept pressing in:
How could so much pain come on the heels of a year I had named Beauty?
In 2025, Beauty was my word of the year. My verse was Psalm 27:4, but the reality is, Psalm 27 in its entirety became the crowning chapter of my year.
When I chose both word and chapter, I imagined a year of noticing sunsets and symphonies.
Of being immersed in art and the romance of life.
I thought it would be a year of feeling beautiful again, after the crucifixion and resurrection of the years before.
I imagined nature, rest, joy. Date nights with my husband. Beach days with my teenage son. And while those moments did exist and were true gifts from the Father of Lights, Beauty revealed something very different in 2025.
Instead of ease, the year was marked by pain.
Loss.
Abandonment.
Strain . . . both personally and within the vocation and work my family carries.
Beauty did not arrive as I expected.
Through prayer, therapy, long conversations with my husband Steven, and a slow surrender of my own will and understanding to my Father, something began to shift. I realized that Beauty was never meant to describe the year itself.
Beauty was about truth coming into the light.
Scripture has always defined beauty this way.
Until 2025, I never realized it.
In the opening lines of the Book of Genesis, God does not begin by adorning creation. We don’t see the finished Garden in verse 1. God begins the process of beauty by speaking light into darkness. (Genesis 1:1-4) Light reveals what is formless. It separates what was tangled and hidden. And God calls that good. Beauty, in Scripture, begins when God shows us what is actually there. When the truth of what could be and what always was is revealed under the masks of darkness and false identity.
This pattern continues throughout the story of God’s dwelling with His people. Before the glory of the Lord fills the tabernacle in the Book of Exodus, there is careful instruction, ordering, stripping away of chaos, and preparation. (Exodus 25:8-9) The beauty of the tabernacle is not the gold itself. It is that God chooses to dwell where truth, order, and readiness have been made. Glory fills what has been made honest.
And ultimately, Scripture shows us this most clearly in the life of Jesus. In the Gospel of John, glory is not revealed through spectacle, but through exposure. John tells us that we have seen Christ’s glory, not only in miracles or transfiguration, but most fully when Jesus is lifted up on the cross. (John 12:32)
Wounded.
Exposed.
Truth revealed.
In Scripture, suffering does not negate beauty.
It often unveils it.
Somewhere along the way, I had come to believe that Beauty meant harmony, comfort, or relief. But Scripture tells a truer story. Beauty is revelation. A thing becomes beautiful when it steps out of hiding.
That is how Psalm 27 begins: “The Lord is my light…”
Not the beauty of the tabernacle.
Not the safety of shelter.
Light first.
Illumination first.
The uncovering of what is unseen.
Beauty, as Scripture defines it, is not sunsets and caviar, dancing in the rain in the arms of my love, or long Taco-Bell lunches, hearing the depths of my teenage son’s heart.
Beauty is truth brought into the open.
And once I saw that, I began to understand what 2025 had actually been doing.
Beauty was never promising me a beautiful year.
It was preparing me for revelation.
If You Are in a Season Where Things Are Not What You Thought They Would Be
If you find yourself in a place where the life you imagined has not unfolded the way you hoped, where beauty feels harder to name, and light feels exposing rather than comforting, you might choose one of the Scriptures below to sit with slowly.
Write it out.
Let it meet you.
Notice what rises without trying to fix it.
1. Book of Psalms 27:1-4
- As you write, notice what the light of God is revealing rather than removing.
2. 2 Corinthians 4:5-6
- Where might light be doing a deeper work than you expected?
3. Gospel of John 1:1-5
- What darkness are you still standing in that the light has not abandoned?
4. Book of Psalms 139:11–12
- Write this slowly. Let yourself consider what God sees clearly, even now.
5. Book of Isaiah 45:2-5
- What has been hidden in this season that could not have been found in the light you imagined?
6. Book of Lamentations 3:31–33
- Where do you need to be reminded that this is not the end of the story?
7. Book of Psalms 51:5-7
- What truth might God be gently bringing into the open, not to shame you, but to heal you?
You may want to bookmark this post or return to these Scriptures slowly over the coming days.
There is no pace to keep here.
No lesson to extract.
Only an invitation to let Scripture sit with you in the places where expectation has given way to reality.
In Part Two, I will explore what that light exposed, and why stripping, painful as it is, may be the beginning of rebuilding.
🕯️ Grace and Peace,
Erika