Buttermilk and Other Such Beauty Secrets

It was a rare evening together with one of our grown daughters.  "What do you want to make?" she said -- she who in third grade had already surpassed my culinary efforts.   I was working on the computer as she walked into the room.  "Do you have....?" as she worked her way through the ingredients of a new recipe.  Buttermilk was the missing element.  "Isn't there something we could substitute?" I asked in an effort not to go out to the store a mile away.

I realized my mistake before she could even give me that look that says, "it won't be the same."  I grabbed my keys and we got into the car.

And as I had two pieces of that apple skillet cake this morning for breakfast with a mug of coffee, I had to agree.  It was worth the trip.

But seeing that container of buttermilk in the fridge transported me back to my childhood when milk was delivered in glass containers and left mysteriously in a little silver box on our doorstep by the milkman.  We drank what is known now as "whole milk."  But my mother drank buttermilk in tall frosty glasses.  I tried it once.  Ewww! "How can you stand to drink that?" I exclaimed.

"Well, I read in a magazine that it gives a woman beautiful skin," she responded.   And she cobbled together her own recipe for beautiful skin:  a large glass of buttermilk daily, moisturizer twice a day, NEVER go out in the sun without a hat, and don't use water on your face.  When we went to the lake, she would sit on the sand under an enormous sun hat and a beach umbrella.  She never entered the water (and only when she was in her 80s did I find out that it was because she had never learned to swim).

And so, she lived.  When I came to be with her in her last days, before I even entered the room, the nurses exclaimed about her beautiful skin.  As a woman of 85, her skin was flawless, as smooth almost as a child's.  She radiates, one of the nurses said.

As I told this story this morning, our daughter said, "Well, I hope I inherit her skin."

And I realized her legacy was not about passing on a genetic trait or even in drinking buttermilk, but the evidence of how daily choices affect our lives.  LORD, help me not to just "make wise choices," but follow You fully.  Am I choosing to listen to You?  Am I reading Your Word?  Am I abiding in You?

What I ingest will manifest itself in my physical body.  When I choose to follow Him fully, God transforms my heart, and He dramatically impacts everything in my life and everyone around me.  The evidence revealed, as God's Word says, in word and deed.  Even impacting the children yet unborn.

Over a lifetime of faithfulness to God, Mom's legacy was more than skin deep.

...as he came down from the mountain,
Moses did not know
that the skin of his face shone
because he had been talking with God.

                               Exodus 34.29