Your Most Beautiful You

This past Monday we learned that Carrie’s cancer is medically incurable. At 3:00 AM the next morning, the Holy Spirit reminded me of these precious words from 2 Corinthians 4...

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, yet our inner nature is being renewed every day.

The time horizon for the decay of our outer nature is brief.  The outer nature is wasting away.  Cancer might accelerate that unavoidable process. However our inner nature is being renewed every day. And I believe that the inner nature is made more beautiful by this process of renewal. I see this every day in the steady, persistent sanctification of my beloved. So while cancer might accelerate the process of the wasting away of her outer nature, it is simultaneously hastening the perfection and beautification of her inner nature.

For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

Carrie, I have watched cancer change you. And I can say that it has changed you in the most beautiful ways. Because you have walked through this trial with humility and faith, your inner nature has been renewed -- yes, more than renewed -- day by day. The Carrie that I see and hold is only a reflection of the eternal Carrie, the Carrie who is loved by God in a beautiful, caring conversation of spirits. I can not see this inner version of you with my eyes, but I daily sense that she is growing stronger and more glorious. Your inner you, the you that is loved and cared for by God, is immutable and mysterious. Because I am also wasting away outwardly on my own timeline, I can only experience the effects of this growing eternal weight of glory in your words and disposition here in the temporal. I can not touch or see the real you. If my inner me could commune with your inner you then the process of either of us dying would be so much more a triviality for us both. 

But your inner you does commune with the Eternal. And He who makes all things new is perfecting you. And if I am still here when your outer nature has wasted away to the point that I can no longer communicate with you, when I will have no visible or audible sense of the you I love so dearly, even then, your inner you will be steadily and unstoppably becoming more beautiful.  And even though I can’t see this most beautiful you with my eyes, I am looking for her. Today, and for the remaining days we have together, however many they may be, I will continue to see the imprint of this most beautiful you. And I know that I will see her face to face one day -- one wonderful, unexplainable, unending day.  I am grateful for every day that I have with you.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.