Won't Be Wrinkle-Free

I was reading a magazine I found in the house today. It's called Prevention. Basically, it's a magazine for middle-aged women who are afraid of getting older and aging. On the front cover, I noticed a line meant to draw the magazine's readers that said something along the lines of finding the "cure" for wrinkles. The "CURE!" As if wrinkles were a disease. Diseases have cures. Not wrinkles.

What on Earth?!

Tell me something. Who decided aging was ugly? Who decided that wrinkles were unattractive? And who decided that gray hair was best hidden? I need to meet this person. And when I do meet them, I would like to kick them in the shin. Yes, that is exactly what I'd like to do. Give them a firm talking to.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. A cure?! For wrinkles?!

Why do we give wrinkles names like....crow's feet? Why not call them memories? Because that is what they are. They are marks from when we laughed and when we cried. They are memories of the nights we spent laughing to tears with the people we love. They are the memories of when we cried until we just couldn't cry anymore. They are beautiful. Soooo beautiful. Aging is not a disease that needs to be cured. It is a beauty that is a stroke of genius.

Aging is such a beautiful part of growing. I am looking forward to it! I know I will struggle excepting these changes as beautiful. But at the end of the day, I know that I'll realize these changes are gifts. So you won't see me trying to die my hair or put 2,894,729 different kinds of obnoxiously expensive wrinkle-free creams on my face. These lines are a way for me to remember all of those memories. My hair graying will be a sign of a life well lived. A sign that I lived, that I loved, that I saw, and that I laughed.

Why would we want to cover that all up? I just can't understand it.


Please, look at her. Is she not beautiful because she has wrinkles and gray hair? Do I need to quickly find this woman and get the so-called "cure" to her ASAP? No. The answer is no. I love this picture. It's one of my favorite photographs in the world. I don't even know this couple. I have so many questions for them though. When I see this, I see a man who loves his wife just as much this day as he did the day she walked down the aisle to him. And I see a woman who still adores her husband with the purest love that could ever exist between two people. He loves every line on her face. And she loves every gray hair on his head. Why? Because they know that those details come with living and that those details are right. *sigh* They don't need a "cure."

I can't really speak for men because I'm not a man and I don't know what effect aging has on you guys. But, ladies, I pray that one day you come to terms with the fact that aging is beautiful and a gift. And that anyone or any society that makes you feel otherwise needs to be tazed pronto. Look at those lines that you think are ugly as memories you get to share with the world. And your gray hair as a marking of the wisdom you possess from the life you lived and the lessons you learned.

Don't ever look to "cure" something that is so beautiful and such a part of you.

Love you.