As the years rush by, drain out of our hands, the crows feet march across faces, the skin sags, the lines crease and deepen.

Faces begin to look like maps,

like memories.

I have never yet met a woman who loved her wrinkles.

You may say that's only natural. They serve as scars; they are the marks of time.

But maybe time is trying to give us gift.

It is funny to me, our society. Always trying to grow up. Always trying to rush the gifts of age. But never seeing age as a gift. Never wanting to grow old. They want time's gifts without the badge.

The commercials preach it. The mothers' worried sighs teach it. Age is to be feared. Wrinkles must be gotten rid of.

Seems like every other person is doing it. Having the skin tucked and buffed and medicated. Seems like we'd go over our faces with an eraser if we could.

But to do so would be to erase a story.

To erase beauty.

Growing up and growing old are inseparable friends. And there's that word. Growth. The lines on our faces are not from nothing.

Me, I try to see wrinkles as souvenirs. We all go on trips and gotta buy that mug, that t-shirt, to prove we've been someplace. Well, time is kind enough to provide souvenirs to prove that we've lived. We've loved.

And we didn't pay for these lines, these gifts, in money.

We've poured out the hourglass of time with friends, family, on adventure and in trial.

These marks on our faces testify to laughs laughed, to all the tears, the smiles, the frustration, the joy. They speak of our daughter's birth, of countless thanksgivings around the table with family. They whisper of thousands of sunrises and moonrises seen, of summers catching fireflies, and they tally hands held. Hugs given.

Our faces are monuments, roadmaps of memories.

The world denies it, hides it, shoves it maliciously in the basement closet, but wrinkles are beautiful in a strange and holy way.

The world sees our lines as ugly scars, sees visible age as a curse.

But what if we didn't.

What if we ran old hands over faces in love, and we remembered.

What if we looked in the mirror and thanked God that we are still breathing.

Shouted in joy to these marks that we've lived.

And these reminders, they remind us of mortality, of eternity. They are messages, warnings, good tidings, that soon enough our stay here is up. And we'll be going home.

They are a map of thanks, of all the good we've had, the road trips we've taken, the people we've known.

They murmur it through all our days, marking the span of them:

Time is a precious gift.

Pour it out, crease it up, wring it out, give it away.

Just don't throw it away.

Mark your days well, for they mark you. Now and into eternity.

All your marked days. . . give this strange beauty, time, back to the Giver, to God. His own Son was marked for us. And He will mark you as His own, not just on this earth, but for all time.

And this here is an incredible poem about the relationship of time and beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

THE LEADEN ECHO

How to keep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere
known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch
or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty... from vanishing
away?

Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankèd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still
messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there's none, there's none, O no there's none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding
sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there's none; no no no there's none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

THE GOLDEN ECHO

Spare!
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's air.
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Óne. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's
fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and
dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-
lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,
gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks,
loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant,
girlgrace—
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them
with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before
death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's
self and beauty's giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind
what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we so
haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged,
so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.—
Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—
Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.