Lord, when I was 9 years old, I met Deanne Mistretta, my cousin, age 14, who lived in California. As I looked at Deanne with her long blond hair, green eyes, tanned skin and wearing a white summer dress and sandals, I thought I had seen the most beautiful girl You ever created on Earth.

No words could adequately express what the beauty You created in Deanne did for me as I struggled with the ashes of polio and the ugliness of surgery, scars, casts, deformities, braces, bedpans, and urinals.

Years later at Methodist Hospital I woke up from surgery to have lengthened a steel rod in my back. My pain was diminished and my spirits were uplifted upon seeing the poster my Mother placed on the wall above my bed. It was of Deanne who had just been selected Miss Santa Barbara.

God, please help all Your children find the beauty which always dwells in the ashes of life and the living of it. That beauty is just as present as You are in the lives we live.

May we see beauty as a gift You give us as part of Your grace. Beauty in a young girl or a handsome boy. In witnessing a simple act of kindness. A warm embrace. The blooming of a rose. The Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes along country roads. The rays of the morning sun. The beams of a full moon.

In our own ashes at the end of our days on Earth, may we have faith that we will find the beauty of Your eternal love and the radiant light of Your Son, the Risen Christ. Amen

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Jack H. Emmott is a Senior Counsel of Gray, Reed & McGraw, LLP, a 120-lawyer full service firm in Houston, Texas, a Board-Certified Family Law and Master Credentialed Collaborative Law Professional Divorce Attorney, Mediator, Author, Entrepreneur and Inspirational Speaker. For more information about Jack or his latest book, Bending Angels: Living Messengers of God’s Love, go www.BendingAngel.com.