Dear Friends,

I am writing the current messages from notes on the road during our recent 17-day road trip from California to New Hampshire and back. Driving long distances gives one time to think and travel always teaches one new things. I am sharing some of those with you. I apologize to a few of you for the repeat of a message you received by text page or on Face Book.

Blessedly, this message does not concern politics. I have voted and I am done with the whole mess except for having to endure whoever gets elected.

I have attached a photograph for this week’s message. But you will need to click on the link yourself if you want to see it.

. . .

The dictionary definition of the adjective “ugly,” is “unpleasant or repulsive or hideous, especially in appearance.”

I have never told anyone, “You are ugly.”  I may have called them other things, but I don’t remark on personal appearance unless it is a compliment.

It is said in our family lore that the first time I was taken to church as an infant, a teen-age girl took a look at my face and said, “E-e-e-w-w-w, what’s wrong with his eyes.” They were crossed of course. I happen to have been born with the muscular imbalance in the eye sockets called strabismus. A surgery at age-five fixed as much of the problem as could be fixed then, but my eyes still wander especially when I am tired.

I think it was my mother who I first remember telling me I was ugly. She was driving me home from school in the second grade and suddenly said, “You know it is too bad that your head is too big for your body and your nose is too big for your face.” I didn’t know what to say so, I said nothing. Clearly, my appearance was a disappointment, but what could I do?

The lack of hand-eye coordination caused by my strabismus made me a late-bloomer in sports. My grade school classmates did not miss this problem, and I was often referred to with contemptuous terms like “Spazo,” and “Cordo.”

With a first name that easily rhymes with a lot of words, I evoked a frenzy of rhetorical criticism and sarcasm when limerick writing was introduced to my sixth-grade class.

There once was a boy named Kent
whose nose was big and bent
his eyes were crossed
and he got lost
and that was it for Kent

There is a guy named Kent
whose face is one big dent
why he looks that way
I couldn’t say
but let’s hide him in a tent.

You get the point.

Fortunately, my personality tends towards the cerebral rather than the emotional. Whatever Mom thought about my personal appearance, she tended to my intellectual life with regular trips to the library and opportunities for learning outside of school. My friendships developed along the lines of my ability to communicate rather than appearance.

Still, I received the comments, “Why aren’t you as good-looking as your brothers?” Or, what did your mother ever do to deserve you?”

I figured out how to turn to my advantage the shallow underestimation of others based on my looks. By the time adversaries learned I was prepared and articulate, they were exposed and vulnerable.

There are other kinds of ugliness than physical appearance. Anger and sarcasm can leave repulsive scars. When conflict or disclosure of a humiliating secret is anticipated, it is often said, “It’s about to get ugly.” “Ugly” is a term for whatever makes one cringe and turn away.  By this definition, I am ugly and have caused a lot of ugliness.

In my work as an attorney, I encounter many ugly things — cruel rejections of spouses or children, the physical and emotional disfigurement from abuse, contemptuous treatment of people based on their gender, looks, disabilities, race, and ethnic backgrounds, exploitation and greed, the ravages of drug and alcohol abuse, shredded confidence and brokenness from shame, and an endless list of open lesions, both self-inflicted and caused by others.

The playwright Eugene O’Neill once uncharacteristically wrote, “We are born broken. We mend by living. The grace of God is the glue.” I have learned and live the truth of that statement every day as Jesus’ grace is applied to the cracks and blemishes of my soul.

On the fourth night of our recent transcontinental road trip, Patricia and I pulled into Duluth, Minnesota, a gritty port city on Lake Superior. Our room looked out on the quiet, protected harbor, but all night I was intrigued by the roar of the wind-blown surf on the east side of Minnesota Point. Just before dawn, I slipped on my clothes and headed out for a look.

There are two jetties that mark and protect the channel by which the deep-water freighters enter the Port of Duluth. A lighthouse is placed at the far end of each jetty to guide the ships in.

I walked out on one of those jetties into a strong wind from the northeast pushing the waves up against the seawall and the beach. The rising sun was a golden glow behind the clouds. Lake Superior was a cold, dark, gun-metal gray.

Peeling white paint covered the bricks of the wind-and-wave blasted lighthouse. They were covered with foul graffiti of the type adolescent boys and men of arrested adolescence scrawl on blank surfaces in a crude attempt to express their virility.

I took some pictures of the Lake and the Duluth waterfront and was turning to leave when I spotted two pieces of graffiti that stopped me for reflection.

“You are loved” was printed out with a black marker high up on the wall. There was a line crossed through the “loved,” by someone who apparently found the grace of the thought too good to be true.

Both the statement “You are loved,” and the cross-out mean something to me. I’ve struggled much of my life to believe I was loved, or even lovable. I hurt a lot of people before my Heavenly Father soaked His love into the roots of my soul as my living reality.

The other statement was this distillation of the Gospel in three words printed in thick, heavy strokes.
.
GOD
LOVES
UGLY.

“God loves ugly” is both a statement of judgment and of redemption. I am ugly — crossed eyes, big nose, and overweight. I can’t pretend otherwise. And that’s just the surface. The real judgment is this: I think rotten, malicious thoughts. I have stains on my soul from spilling out anger over a long time. This only changed for me when Jesus convinced me I could lay down my sword and shield and stop studying war because the flow of His grace was sufficient to cover everything I was mad and ugly about.

The redemption is that God loves ugly. The Jesus who did not hesitate to touch the disfigured, contagious leper, who lacked an appearance that left any impression of beauty, who bears permanent crimson scars from wounds intended for me, who died for me in a mess of blood, torn flesh and bodily fluids, knows how ugly I can be. In fact, He chooses to live in me which proves He loves ugly. I live and love in hope because God loves ugly.

I drove a hard 2051 miles over mountains, deserts, prairies and through deep forests to get to that lighthouse. I think God wanted to remind me, “‘You are loved,’and you know by now that my love for you cannot be crossed out or erased. Please believe that ‘God loves ugly,’ and I certainly won’t quit loving you regardless of your thoughts, feelings or appearance, or anything you’ve done to yourself or others.”

So I ask you, reading this — are you ugly inside or out? Or do you feel ugly? I am sharing this experience with you because you too need to know the truth — the Gospel inscribed in black Sharpie graffiti. YOU ARE LOVED (with no cross-outs) because GOD LOVES UGLY.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent