Well, here you are, December.

Advent begins. The expectant waiting. The anticipation. The something more.

You are a reminder to me that there is true beauty waiting to bloom in the ugly little.

I was wardrobed in awkwardness as a child. My mom wore the adjective “drop-dead gorgeous.” My older half-sister, Sharon, was endowed with the adjective “beautiful.” But this gangly girl with bucked teeth and too-skinny-legs received two words to describe her to others: “ugly little.” For the first nine years of my life, I was also known by my middle name – LaVerne. I was the girl with the glasses, in the pants that had to be lengthened with extra fabric that never quite matched. The girl with homemade haircuts and the slight lisp who still sucked her finger until a slumber party at the age of nine made her realize she was the only one.

I always felt like the only one.

While other little girls dreamt of being beauty queens and mommies and ballerinas, I thought about being an archaeologist because I was smart (a “good thing,” according to people). Marriage wasn’t an option for an ugly little, so I determined I would adopt kids who had been rejected by others.

And even after I shed the glasses and the middle name and the bad clothing and the lisp – even after things got pretty on the outside – I still felt the shame of the ugly little.

I didn’t understand just how beautiful an ugly little could be until I met you, December. Really met you. I can’t remember the year, but there was a moment when you became real – life and death and redemption and pain, all wrapped up in a moment in time. You took on humanity and you took on divinity.

And you breathed, December. You inhaled all the holiday and the winter chill and the chaos, and you exhaled something more.

Of all the wrappings God could choose to reveal Himself, he chose ugly little.

He has no beautiful body and when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him. ~Isaiah 53

Life. Love. Redemption. All waiting to be revealed in ugly little. All waiting to be poured out and given to this one.

Even if I was the only one.

And together, we bloom into beautiful.

Even when I allow myself to feel the shame again. Even when I fall apart and grab desperately for the rotting wardrobe of who I was.

You come along, December. And you remind me who I am.  And Whose I am.

And you remind me that, as long as there is breath to be found, there is hope. There is no such thing as a lost cause, a hopeless case, a gone-too-far or a never-turning-back.

Even for ugly littles like me.

What would your note to December say? I wrote mine as part of Story Sessions. You can be part of the community here http://eloranicole.com/subscribe