When my daughter Olivia turned twelve years old, our family celebrated with a modified bat mitzvah -- the traditional Jewish coming-of-age rite. Olivia memorized a passage of scripture that marked a transition toward the next phase of her young womanhood, and friends and family compiled a dictionary offering our collective definitions of terms that society seems bent on warping --- words like beauty and love and friendship and faith. As a part of this process, we had a number of conversations about the way beauty is expressed and embodied. Because the mirror can be such a volatile place for a young girl coming to terms with competing ideas about what constitutes loveliness, I wanted to install a reminder of God's perspective. I am convinced that God looks at His babies -- the unrepeatable, irreducible renderings of hands and faces carved after His divine image -- and sees surpassing, sublime loveliness. When I asked Hannah to create this vinyl reminder for my kids' bathroom mirror, I requested that she follow the word with an endmark -- a period, emphasizing the finality of God's opinion. Hopefully, this caption reminds my daughter that her Creator has the last word on the face of His beloved, and that word is beautiful.
At the same time that I requested this word for my daughter, I also commissioned one for a dear friend of mine suffering from an auto-immune disorder that has caused her to lose her hair. I hope that God's view of her loveliness daily supersedes the moments of insecurity, sadness, and fear that threaten to dim the gorgeous light that shines from her heart, her life, and her overwhelmingly beautiful face.
-Amy Linnemann
