She looks in the mirror and smiles. She is beautiful and she knows it. Her dress is pure white and it hangs in spotless perfection from her frame, accentuating her feminine shape and making her skin shimmer. Her hair is up, a few wispy curls framing her glowing cheeks. Her lips are turned up in a sweet smile that extends upward through her entire face and explodes out through her eyes. She sways gently back and forth and laughs lightly. Her sway turns into a spin and she laughs louder as she watches her skirt rush out from her body. She raises her arms as she spins, joy flowing from every pore. And in that moment, in the carelessness of exuberant abandonment, she loses focus on the world around her, she focuses only on how she feels and not on her surroundings. And as she raises her arms and spins, her fingers, tipped with polished nails connect with the bottle of nail polish left open, sitting on the table beside her. In one horrible moment, the bottle is flung through the empty air and the bright red liquid inside is flung across her dress, leaving a stain on her once pristine skirt.
She stops spinning.
She is still...silent...stunned...
"No!" Her mind screams, "This cannot happen, How could I have been so careless?" She stares down at her ruined dress and chokes out a quiet, strained "...no..."
She gasps as the tears start to flow, streaming down her face, dropping onto her trembling hands. The next "No" is much louder. An anguished cry, the cry of a girl whose perfect dreams have been crushed.
Her bridegroom is quickly by her side, having responded instantly to the cry of the one he loves. He holds her, strokes her hair, and whispers in her ear that he doesn't care about the dress, he loves her. Slowly the convulsing subsides but the tears are still there, the damage cannot be undone.
He stands back from her and looks at her. Her hair has fallen, collapsed in a disheveled mess down her back. Her eyes are red, her face flushed and covered with splotches, almost matching the red splotches on her dress.
He smiles, brushes her cheek with his hand, and whispers, "You're so beautiful."
He kneels down, picks up the nail polish, dips the brush in the bottle and reaches toward his beloved's dress.
She takes a step back. "No! What are you doing?"
"Be still."
"No, this doesn't make sense."
"Trust me."
"Okay..." her voice catching as she whispers.
He reaches out and begins to apply more red nail polish to the ruined dress.
She watches him for a moment. "But you're just making it worse!"
She cries.
"Be still and trust me."
She closes her eyes and begins to cry again, shame and anger and confusion overwhelming her, but she is still.
For a long time she is still as he silently and diligently works. She runs out of tears to cry, there is nothing left to feel. She stands there with eyes closed, an empty shell with ruined dreams.
There is stillness and silence in the room. It is endless. Then, when all hope has drained out of her, she hears a whisper. "Open your eyes."
She is surprised to hear his voice after so long, she had forgotten he was there, forgotten that she was not alone. She opens her eyes and looks into his. He is smiling.
"You are so beautiful," he whispers.
She stares at him for a long time and then lowers her head in shame as she remembers, but her downcast eyes don't see a stain. What she sees shocks her. She sees a dress that is no longer pure white. Painted on the clean background is a beautiful pattern of swirls and arcs, a design so intricate she can't see a pattern to it yet somehow it is perfectly balanced, each surprising turn leading to another beautiful shape, almost as if you could read an entire story in the swirls if you knew how to interpret the design. There is no stain, it has all been swallowed up in the unique work of art that her dress now is.
She looks up at him, her eyes wide with amazement.
He is smiling, love emanating from his eyes. "You are so beautiful."
She smiles, then laughs, then throws herself into his arms and together they spin.
"He has made everything beautiful in His time" ~ Ecclesiastes 3:11
