A Little Perspective

Sometimes, perspective is all I need to set my mind right.

This past weekend I left everything I know behind - schedules, routines, people - and headed up to the mountains with a friend who had invited me to join her sisters and their friends for a girls' getaway weekend. I don't remember the last time I did anything like that, but whereas my natural inclination would have been to decline the invitation (based on the fact that I didn't know anyone), I took a shot and went.

When we first got there, I suddenly felt transported back to high school. I felt awkward and out of place, and imaginary audience of adolescence reared its head in a very real way. When you're the new girl, the only one out of the bunch that doesn't have a long history with any of the others in the group - that's intimidating at first. And as I walked into that cabin, I was flooded with the feelings that every other woman there would be scrutinizing every detail about me: my clothes, my shoes, my hair, my skin, my weight, my height, my style, my voice, my personality - and I suddenly felt as if I wasn't going to be deemed good enough for them. This was before anyone even said hello.

The funny thing is that it didn't take long for it to occur to me that these ladies were not up at that cabin to get to know me. (Funny how during adulthood, things like that actually do occur to you, whereas during adolescence, no one could convince you otherwise).  But then, I was hit with this: "Tell us something exciting about yourself." I had nothing.

Exciting? Interesting might have been slightly easier to come up with, but exciting? What's exciting about myself? My life? The fact that I couldn't answer scared me.

As I laid in bed trying to drift off to sleep after the evening's festivities died down, I found myself longing for that something, that thing that would set my heart on fire and make me want to pursue it so passionately that everything else would sort of fade away as not nearly as important (read: laundry, dishes, diapers, and the like). I thought about all the things that other people do, all the things I like to do, and when I compared the two, I felt as if the things I enjoy aren't nearly as "exciting" as the things that so many other people are excited about (chiefly among them, training for a marathon). And I beat myself up about it for a good bit of the weekend. But by the time I got home, I realized that exciting doesn't have to be limited to running marathons. It doesn't have to be limited to mission trips to China. But, it also can be something more than buying organic strawberries at the farmer's market in January (True story. I bought some about two weeks ago. And it was very exciting.)

I've been searching lately for something more. I don't think that's a secret around here. Something more, though, seems a bit elusive because it's ill-defined. More of what? More busy? More meaningful? More exciting? More productive? More spiritual? More creative? More holy? More what? I think the answer is this: all of that. And that is overwhelming. It's a tall order for someone who feels a bit lost.

When I was working an outside job, I was distracted from this desire. Perhaps the job wasn't my calling or my dream, but it was a good distraction from the fact that I actually want more out of life than just to make it through the day. And now, making it through the day sane is at the top of my list, especially since I've had a very moody toddler on my hands for the past month.

Being surrounded by a group of friends tell old stories from a common past and updates on their current lives gave me a glimpse into how other people live, what's important to them, and what excites other people. I heard recipes being exchanged, discipline tips being shared, plans for marathon training being devised, and stories about trips to other exotic places exchanged. All of this was laced with laughter and the belief that life was actually quite good. Perhaps imperfect, but overwhelmingly good. And perhaps that's what was exciting about these women's lives, not just the marathons or the trips.

After gaining new perspective, I have a deep desire to stop thinking about things I want to do, and actually do them. I've let money and time and fear keep me from pursuing these things that seem exciting to me for far too long, and so today, I'm setting a new course for myself and giving myself permission to go and learn and discover. To try. And to be excited about that.

And the first step, for me at least, is to make a list. So off I go to do so.

  

(Image via)

What sorts of things have you been dreaming of doing lately? What's holding you back? Are those limitations real or imagined? What would it take for you to stop making excuses and just get going?

Here We Go Again

I wrote this last Sunday when I was in the throws of feeling a little off.

Do you ever have those days? Days when whatever battle you're facing - mental or otherwise - seems to be staring you in the face, mocking you, dogging your heels and not giving you a moment's breath? I do, every once in awhile.

This post didn't actually get posted due to some strange problem with Blogger, so in my draft folder it's sat for the past few days. But here I am, finding myself with the urge to actually post it in hopes that it will, again, be like ripping off a band aid and exposing the wound to some air. And Lord knows I could use a little bit of fresh air, these days.

This is something I've dealt with before, many times over in fact. But here I am still, or again, confronting that pesky little thing that comes out when I'm at my most vulnerable. Being pregnant, I'm vulnerable to succumbing to my feelings and throwing myself a pity party about it. 

I have come to realize in a new, very real way that most women aren't very comfortable in their own skin. And if they are, they've most likely walked through a very raw place in their life in which they weren't comfortable with themselves, a place where they were plagued with questions and doubt and frustration and misunderstanding, the unwelcome result of a wound inflicted in childhood, a wound they weren't really even aware of even, until their incessant tendency to compare themselves to other women somehow caught their attention. It's not new news; I've known this on some level for a long time. I understand it in a new way now, though. We're not all that different after all. And the divide that keeps me captive to the idea that "I'm the only one who doesn't have it all together" is fading away.

For most of my life, I simply thought this is just how women are: they compare themselves to each other in some unspoken competition for who could be . . . well, what, exactly, I never knew for sure, but I suspected it was a combination of the prettiest, the funniest, the smartest, the friendliest, the best dressed, the most stylish. It seemed like everything was a competition with us girls - and it didn't matter how much I actually liked the girl I pitted myself against; I somehow usually ended up feeling less than, as if I was somehow cosmically insignificant if my dress size happened to be slightly larger than any one of my friends.

I'm not sure I even really participated in this collective comparison until I was in fifth grade. I call that my "butterball stage," and anyone who knows me well knows why. I was pudgy. No - that's not really fair. I was really pudgy - and I was blissfully unaware of it until the moment that changed everything.

My dad was the children's pastor at our church, and it wasn't abnormal for us kids to go down to the church office every now and then for some reason or another. One day, my mom took me down there, just the two of us. I don't know if I really knew the reason we were going or not, but I remember what happened when we got there. We went into the bathroom and I stood on the scale and my mom read the number aloud. "115. Now, if you can just stay there, you'll be ok." I've never forgotten those words, not in the 20 years or so since I heard them.

Before anyone is tempted to assume that I'm villifying my mother for this, let me say this: the words were innocent. Her intentions were not malicious. Never in her wildest dreams would she have thought that moment would stick with me into adulthood. I love my mom, and I know she loves me whatever size, shape, color, or texture I come in.

What did happen, though, was that those words had power over me for years. After that day, I was acutely aware of weight and size, and how they were inextricably linked to being ok. From that moment on, 115 was my number, the number that I couldn't ever quite reach again, the number that dictated my own sense of self-worth. If I wasn't 115, I wasn't ok. Something was wrong with me. No matter what else was good about me, the only thing that would make me ok was the right number on that scale. I was wounded without realizing it. As I grew up, I came to believe that if I couldn't be ok, than at least I should be humble about it, as if self-deprecation made me a better person or something. And I became obsessed with the scale.

When I got a bit older (and perhaps a bit wiser), the Lord graciously revealed this wound to me and helped me to see its effects on my life. And for a few years, I did fairly well believing the truth about myself and at battling through this weakness of mine, the weakness that makes me feel distinctly less than because of my unrealistic standards for myself. I began to feel comfortable with myself and accepted the fact that 115 isn't a healthy number for myself. I came to terms with the fact that if I got to 115, I still wouldn't be ok because I would be under weight of my height.

Even so, that nagging sense that something about me wasn't quite enough was always with me. Pregnancy brings this out in even fuller force, even though there's a very real (and very apparent) reason why my body is morphing into a shape that feels alien - and even a bit monstrous. The amazing truth that there's a new life forming inside of me doesn't shake the feeling that somehow, it's not making me any more beautiful than before. In fact, as the scale creeps up little by little, I watch my sense of self-worth diminish just a little bit more. And so I start to self-deprecate. I start to berate myself for things beyond my control, and I compare myself with other women who are pregnant or have had children and are all the more beautiful for it. (Especially the ones whose bodies don't change at all except for a slight blip in their midsection.)

But you know what? I'm realizing that self-deprecation is false humility. And I'm also realizing that it is impossible for me to be the only woman to deal with these issues. If heart burn and round ligament pain and swollen ankles and mood swings are all common effects of pregnancy, then a distorted body image probably is one, too. And to go even further, that distorted body image probably doesn't just exist during pregnancy - but pregnancy is the perfect time for it to flair up again and take advantage of an already highly sensitive, emotional girl who is questioning herself anyway.

And so, that being said, there are a few things I want to leave you with today. Since I wrote this on Sunday (and according to my own rules I'm supposed to be leaving you with my favorite tidbits from around the web this week) here are things that have stuck with me for the past few days. The first is a link to My Body Gallery, a site that shows what women with a particular height and weight actually look like. This helped me realize just how distorted my own view of myself is.

The second is a link to a friend's blog where she posted something very similar to this just the other day. When I read it, I thought, "I was right. More women deal with this than any of us really think about." When I catch myself thinking I'm surely the only one struggling with this particular battle, I'll think of her, and then I'll think of all the women she represents, women who outwardly seem strong and secure, but who inwardly are doing their best to get by just like the rest of us. And here's a link to a video she made of herself while she was working through some of these demons awhile back. The video spoke to me profoundly, and I find that the chorus of the song has been popping into my head every now and then for the past several days - a welcome reminder to my weary heart that its time to give up the fight and embrace the beauty of who I am, just as I am.

And finally, here's a link to a project I finished awhile ago: Project 31. Project 31 was a challenge to rediscover my own true beauty, to deal with my demons and get right in my brain about who and what I am. I find that even though I finished quite some time ago now, it really is an ongoing process for me, and I've got to keep going back to these truths to keep my mind healthy when it comes to all this stuff. I'm doing it for myself, yes, but also for my daughter who will watch me and mimic me, who will learn from me and who will emulate me.

This picture says it all.