Finding Beauty in the “Unlovely”

Today my post is packed full of pictures of messes around my home. I’ll explain this more later in the post, but for now, a story:

Nehemiah sleeps on a toddler bed. The bed was generously given to us by friends who used it for three of their own kids. The frame is white plastic and it’s a bit worn. A standard crib mattress fits down inside on top of metal bars created to support it. It’s covered in well-loved sheets with their share of stains or small tears. A truck blanket given to him by his Pappi is folded up at the bottom and it clashes intensely with his green and white pillowcase with a modern pattern. A smaller courdoroy pillow stitched with his name on it, sits on the bed as well, a gift from his Mimi and Gran. He has a few stuffed animals hanging out on his bed too, that is, when they haven’t been kicked to the side or shoved between the bed and the wall. It’s not exactly a bed that would show up on design sponge or decor 8. But wait, there’s more.

When Nehemiah was even younger he had a really hard time getting to sleep on his own. He would always ask that Tony or I crawl into bed beside him and lay with him until he could fall asleep. Keep in mind, the mattress is crib size. Not exactly made for plush sleeping for an adult. But Nehemiah is a pretty darn good cuddler, and that is hard to pass up, comfortable bed or not. So on countless occassions, his daddy or his mommy could be found at about 8:30 PM spooning with a little boy who was scared to be left alone with the night.

If you lift the mattress up, which I do quite often, as accidents happen and the sheets must be changed, you will notice the metal bars are curved and bent and worn into odd shapes. This is from the extra weight that bed has had to hold as an adult body sneaked in beside a child’s. One or two of the metal bars periodically pop out of place and have to be shoved back into their holes so the mattress won’t sink to the floor. Sometimes I get really frustrated with having to put these bars back into place. Sometimes I think, “We really should get him a nicer bed.” Sometimes I just wish everything matched.

One day I was struck with the hidden beauty of Nehemiah’s bed. As much as I sometimes hate it, his bed is a hodge-podge of love. The bed itself a gift from close friends, blankets and pillows from family, stuffed animals drawn by him and stitched by me, and metal bars, supporting his mattress, that are bent with the love of his daddy and mommy who cuddled him night after night.

If I allow my artist’s eye to look past perfection and what I’ve been told is beautiful, I can find a hidden beauty in the unlovely, and the flaws can surprisingly conjure up an even richer beauty than perfection ever could.

This is painfully difficult for me to do though. I have to look with my heart instead of my eyes, and that takes a certain CHILDLIKE training that I’ve not yet mastered. As The Little Prince would say, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

That smothering feeling I get sometimes when I look at Nehemiah’s bed is the same sort of feeling that comes over me when my house gets messy. I start to feel as thought things are spiraling out of my control. I literally get short of breath sometimes. It’s pathetic, I know. I really do hate it, but it’s a battle I have to fight. So yesterday in my effort to find the beauty in the unlovely (and try to take to heart some of what Valerie wrote about chasing imperfection) I started snapping photos of the mess around me.

I was surprised how taking pictures actually calmed me down. It allowed me to look through the viewfinder, which isolated messes into single vignettes. It broke down the big mess and big chaotic feelings until bite-size pieces. What surprised me even more is how I actually started to notice beautiful details past the mess. It was as though I was looking with a microscope, gazing deeper into the unlovely and finding very beautiful details buried down beneath.

I wonder if their is beauty hiding in everything? I wonder if I’ll ever be able to slow down enough to train my body to see with my heart instead of my eye? It’s a characteristic we as artists certainly strive for.

Please tell me, where are you finding beauty in your unlovely this day?