Fading beauty was not meant to be

The conversation around the fire started to take on the feel of a scene from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. As we talked into the night, and wine let down guards, there were three of us only: Lady Terrified, Lady Discretion, and yours truly.

“Terrified” is a woman of about my age who used to be a Broadway dancer. Tall and elegant, she was once also beautiful, but her beauty is fading. She confided in us that every day she “dies” when she looks in the mirror. I could tell that she probably had never said these words to another living soul. And now that she had allowed herself to utter them, her eyes fixed on ours with desperation and she repeated it several times with more urgency, finally able to bear her despair to company she considered safe.

“Discretion” is a very intelligent and accomplished woman perhaps 20 years our junior who is not a Christian. In the first half hour after meeting her, I was impressed by her adeptness, tact, and graciousness in social situations.

It is always an uncomfortable moment when a person like Terrified unexpectedly sheds her mask and crumbles before newfound confidants who are practically strangers to her. And Discretion and I were both doing our best in the situation, like fellow passengers on a sinking canoe feverishly ladling water out by the cupfuls.

Discretion’s main playing card was that Terrified is still beautiful. In fact, “strikingly beautiful,” she said, and that the years have had no power over her. Terrified’s terror was not much assuaged by this encouragement and she kept returning to the expressed wish that if she only had the money to do a few nips and tucks, life would be good again.

Finally I jumped off the you’re-still-lovely bandwagon and went for something more scriptural: I told Terrified that I did not want to deny her reality, and that I, in fact, agreed with her that it stinks that roses fade and grass withers and the beauty of beautiful women is eventually taken from them. I told her that the Bible says it is so, and that it was not meant to be.

This was, in fact, all I had time to share before Discretion, perhaps appalled, returned to vehement confirmations of Terrified’s beauty.

But the following morning I went for a 3-mile walk around Crystal Lake with Terrified, who by this hour had on her daytime face of wellness. It was not until near the end of our promenade that I got up the courage to broach the subject. “About our conversation of last night,” I risked, not sure if evening disclosures are taboo under a glaring sun. She stopped in her tracks and listened intently. I told her this life is short and that God wants to give us new bodies impervious to decay, and I retrieved a pocket Bible and read 1 Corinthians 15.

Terrified listened to my reading, but as we walked back to her cottage, she reiterated that she wished she had money for just a little nip and tuck. It was not the response I was hoping for. But most of us reading this column are old and mature enough to know that this is just the middle of the story, and not the end, and that other chapters more glorious may yet be written.

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