Today is my birthday and I’m 46. It’s one of those times in life when you look in the mirror and ask yourself questions.
Because I recently had lunch with a beautiful older woman who told me she couldn’t recommend the facelift and laser treatment she’d had (which she said felt like a blow torch on her face), I’m not considering a facelift.
Is Your Faith Sagging?
I have been considering how to repair my sagging faith. Like aging skin, faith can lose its strength so gradually that you don’t even notice. It isn’t that I’ve neglected my faith routine any more than I’ve neglected my skin care.
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I hear that there are people who enjoy exercising. They thrive on it.
I’d like to spend some time with this foreign species and soak up some of their enthusiasm and motivation, osmosis-like.
Because I’m more in the exercise-is-really-a-form-of-torture camp. It’s a bit like childbirth for me: painful enough that I need to minimize any aspects that are remotely frustrating in order to pull through it.
I tried walking (not running, mind you) through my neighborhood with my husband and kids. That was stress galore: different paces, fear of cars slamming into children, sippy cups going AWOL…
So, I changed course and crafted a plan I could follow: walking solo on a path of my choosing, the time of day, pace, and duration determined by me alone.
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I gulped hard, forcing a smile as I watched my five year-old slide down the wet strip of yellow. Cold water splashed my shins as he squealed in delight. And still I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She was too young. She didn’t deserve to go so soon. Yet she’s gone. Just like that.
Try as I might, all I could see was what else I could lose…
Fear was percolating when movement across the lawn caught my eye. I glanced over just in time to see the baby cardinal. He saw me, too, as he hopped over to our rain garden and then quickly took flight.
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If you look closely at my hands you’ll see scratches, puppy nips, a few age spots, and some small scars. That’s what you’ll see. What you won’t see are the ones from lies, accusations, betrayal, and rejection. Those are the scars I usually keep hidden.
Why?
Because scar exposure is risky. Revealing our worst scars gives people the opportunity to judge whether or not we deserve them.
I often wonder why we’re so quick to judge one another. Why we feel the need to ask:
- if a person with lung cancer was a smoker.
- if the accident victim was texting.
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You should have seen my to-do lists from a few months ago. So long. So many ambitious tasks to do. What? Did I think it would be fun to write “wash the windows” down on my list every day for a year? Did I really need to write “get husband to clean the garage” again and again? Hyperbole, you know. But there’s a big huge morsel of truth here, folks. And I had to stop doing one thing to discover what was missing in my life.
I stopped writing these long, ridiculous to-do lists for myself.
I had justified it by saying — it’s a brain dump.
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As we walked along the shore, their eyes lit up with delight. The tide had washed up hundreds of small crabs and sand dollars. Without even thinking there could be any danger, my almost 3 year old picked up live crabs with his pudgy little fingers. “Look Mama! It won’t hurt you! He is nice.”
And without another thought he dropped it into his purple bucket to join the other treasures he had found along the shoreline.
The older boys ran ahead with their cousins, squealing and laughing with delight as they scooped up all sorts of beach treasures into their buckets to show off when they returned to the towels.
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