The Intentional Pursuit of Beauty
“You’re going to care that you were here one day.”
There’s a photo taped into my Bible that shows my family when I was four years old. I’m wearing a Little Mermaid shirt and bright pink sneakers. My mom is holding my hand as well as the hand of my toddler sister, who had decided she absolutely would not stand and smile for the camera at that moment. My dad supports her on the other side, her belly showing while her knees dangle above the dirt.
To the left are the remains of Doric columns, evenly spaced but missing their capitals and whatever they once supported. Behind us stand the Roman ruins of the city of Ephesus. On the back of the photo, my dad has written a narration about the city, Saint Paul, and the biblical significance of our standing spot. I can almost hear him say, across three decades, “You’re going to care that you were here one day.” The same phrase he would say when we visited Sherwood Forest, the ancient city of Troy, the Vatican, and the Tower of London. He said the same thing when we saw the Magna Carta, Stonehenge, and the Declaration of Independence.
“You’re going to care that you were here one day.”
I had the unique privilege of growing up in a military family. As a result, by age five, I was better traveled than most people in their entire lives. I was born in Turkey, lived in England, and spent time visiting my parents in Germany until my dad retired after 30 years of faithful service. As you can imagine, moving every two and a half to four years throughout childhood can be difficult and painful, especially for a teenager. Yet, as I reflect on my childhood, I can say with absolute certainty some of the best parts of my childhood are some of the things I love most about the Charlotte Mason method.
Uprooting your life and leaving your friends and extended family can feel like a lot when you're young. The best gift my parents gave me was the blessing of learning to “change my thoughts.” Every new place held a new adventure and new beauty to behold. We were taught to look beyond ourselves and see the good in the newness of our home together. This practice of shifting my perspective is one I have needed my entire life, and my parents helped me learn, from an early age, how to find the good in hard times.
My parents worked hard to instill a sense of beauty and wonder wherever we lived. They built large rooms in which to set my feet, stone by stone. From wandering through the forests near our home and daring each other to pick stinging nettles to walking the halls of the National Gallery in London, we were surrounded by truth, beauty, and goodness. We were taught to care.
When I began homeschooling my daughter, we were introduced to picture study. Since we were settled in Castle Rock, Colorado, and I wasn’t quite ready to venture into Denver alone, picture study seemed a wonderful way to bring art into our home. While studying paintings like The Mona Lisa, I was transported to the Louvre, where my feet had once stood in a literal “large room.”
“You’re going to care that you were here one day.”
My parents took great pains to ensure their children had a childhood of richness and beauty, a life filled with the wonder of every place we visited. But it was also a life in which we were not sheltered from the hardships of humanity. We visited military cemeteries, concentration camps, and battlefields. My dad read every sign, narrating why where we were mattered. This living education and pursuit of beauty in my younger years became foundational in my experiences as both a mother and a mother-teacher. That lifelong pursuit of beauty has become even more meaningful because of my own struggles with chronic illness, infertility, and pain.
In 2022, I was diagnosed with a chronic pain disease. Between MRIs, appointments with multiple doctors, acupuncture, and physical therapy, I often found myself huddled on the couch under a blanket, just trying to make it through the day. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. Sometimes, we’re so deep in a struggle that we can’t see the forest for the trees. For me, there was no forest, no trees; everything felt dark.
Have you ever been told to sit or lie perfectly still for a designated amount of time? Suddenly, your nose itches, your finger twitches, or you feel an overwhelming need to move. As the nurse placed the coil over my face and positioned my body on the board, the technician informed me that the first set of images would take about 30 minutes before they would start my IV. I had been dreading the IV contrast since scheduling the scan six weeks prior, dreading it enough to nearly cancel the appointment.
"Great art has the power to offer fresh air to those suffocating under the weight of life."
—Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind
As the button was pressed and the machine whirred to life, I realized I was in a small, enclosed plastic tube with no opportunity to move. My first thought was, I have to get out of here.
If you’ve had an MRI, you know the experience. It’s like being trapped inside a 2001 computer modem while AOL struggles to connect to the internet. The space is tight, loud, and, for some reason, vibrates. Since I had no option to leave, my only choice was to endure and escape in my mind.
"Education should furnish [a child] with whole galleries of mental pictures, pictures by great artists old and new…every child should leave school with at least a couple hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination…"
—Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education
For years, in our homeschool, we practiced picture study. We focused on an artist each term, studied their work in detail, narrated the pictures, and placed them on our timeline. I never realized that in doing so, I had also been equipping myself with a mental gallery, an arsenal of beauty stored away for when I needed it most.
Lying in that MRI machine, unable to move, I let my mind wander through the halls of my imagination. I called upon paintings we had studied, landscapes I had absorbed, and beauty I had intentionally placed in my memory. I had built a large room for my daughter’s education, one I could visit myself.
I wonder: What situations will my children face that will require them to call upon their own galleries?
Last summer, we spent a week in the Florida Keys. After catching a variety of fish, my son looked at me in awe and said, “Mama! There didn’t have to be so many fish! They’re all different!” What a gift! This world could have been simple and sparse, but it is filled with infinite variety.
We need to cultivate the habit of seeing beauty. Many of the world’s national parks exist simply because someone long ago saw them and said, “This must be protected.”
When Teddy Roosevelt visited a section of the Colorado River slated for railroad construction, he spent time there, absorbed its beauty, and ultimately chose to preserve it. Because of that decision, I could raft that river with my children this summer. My dad has rafted that river with his grandchildren. I can’t help but wonder if Roosevelt thought, “People will care they were here.”
I imagine Job lifting his worship in song, as Mary did when she learned she would bear the Christ child, and as Elizabeth did when she rejoiced over her long-awaited son. In our souls, we are wired to raise our voices in lament or praise. Hymns connect us to the saints who have gone before us, binding our hearts to the faithful across generations.
“It Is Well with My Soul” was composed by Philip Paul Bliss, but its lyrics were written by Horatio G. Spafford, a man who knew deep sorrow. Spafford, a successful attorney and real estate investor, lost his fortune in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Around the same time, his beloved four-year-old son died of scarlet fever.
Hoping a change of scenery would bring a sense of peace and healing, he sent his wife and four daughters ahead on a voyage to England, planning to join them after tending to business at home. But tragedy struck. Their ship collided with another vessel and sank; more than 200 lives were lost, including all four of Spafford’s daughters. His wife, Anna, was among the few survivors. When she reached England, she sent him a telegram with the words: “Saved alone. What shall I do?”
Spafford immediately set sail to join his grieving wife. During the journey, the captain, aware of his loss, called him to the deck as they passed over the very spot where his daughters had perished. As Spafford gazed at the waves, words of comfort and hope filled his heart, pouring out into a hymn that would echo through generations:
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll—
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
These are the same hymns I grew up singing in our Lutheran church. Their melodies and words thread through the moments of my life: my wedding day, my daughter’s baptism, and candlelit Christmas services with family. They tether me to my younger self and the faithful who penned them.
As mothers, we must remember that we are not alone. It can feel, at times, as if we are raising children in a broken world all by ourselves. But dear friends, this is not the case. There were hymns before Christian radio stations played a dozen variations of Amazing Grace, key changes and floodlights, and worship leaders filled stadiums. Hymns hummed by mothers as they rocked their babies to sleep and hung laundry on the line. A small band played hymns as the Titanic slipped beneath the waves. Hymns remind us that we are not alone, that we are pilgrims pressing on toward glory. Beauty is often brought forth through tragedy and echoes across the ages.
During my seasons of hardship, I began to intentionally seek beauty. There was little I could control, but I could pursue goodness. I could expand my education, train my eyes to see what is lovely, and lean into the lessons I had been taught my whole life. And in doing so, I discovered what the faithful before me had always known: when sorrow swells like the sea, it is still well with my soul.
Several months after my MRI, I learned that my autoimmune condition had returned. Less than a year later, my vision began failing. I’ve lost between 40–60% of the vision in my right eye. I don’t know if my sight will remain intact or, Lord willing, heal. But what I do know is that while I have eyes to see and ears to hear, I will seek beauty. To train our children to see beautiful things, we must first do it for ourselves. Intentionally seeking this beauty in the day-to-day has been a life raft in times of tempest.
“You’re going to care that you were here one day.”
This year, we’re focusing on architecture in our studies. With each chapter of our book, I find myself revisiting places my parents once took me: the Roman Baths, the Pantheon, and Olympia. There’s an old video from my toddler years in Turkey, where my sister and I run freely through ancient ruins, picking up weathered stones and climbing over fallen pillars. As I read about these places with my daughter and listen to her narrate, I see them again through her eyes.
Soon, my husband and I will take our children to England. My daughter will be the same age I was when I lived there. We’ll walk the halls of the National Gallery, stand in the Globe Theatre, and sit in the quiet reverence of Westminster Abbey. As I watch them take it all in, I’ll pray these moments of beauty take root in their hearts, ready to be drawn upon in years to come. And just as my father once did, I’ll whisper, “You’re going to care that you were here one day.”
Beth Howard 2025
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