This photo has come to haunt me. It fills my heart with great joy, and enormous frustration all at the same time.
It is a screaming reality for all I have once been, and all that I am no longer. It tells of a moment in time when I had completed my first full marathon less than a week prior, when the scale showed the exact number my mind wanted to see, the new clothes all still fit perfectly, and there was genuine happiness and contentment coursing through my veins.
I held strength, willpower, grit, and gratitude in the palm of my hand on that day.
This photo was taken exactly three years ago, at the base of Harney Peak, with my dad and brother, after we had just hiked to the top and back down together. At the top my dad asked us to make a promise that we would do this hike together again when he turned seventy.
He turned seventy in January. My brother and I had made plans to meet there again this summer to hike it with him. And then Covid-19 took the world by storm. All plans changed, all normalcy, rationality, mental and physical stability long gone. At least for me anyway.
I had fought through February 2020 like a warrior. I had trained hard, eaten well, hydrated perfectly, meditated, prayed, slept… and for a few short days… I was back to where I was on that day when I had stood on top of that mountain years earlier. I was lean and clean and healthy, both inside and out. It is a feeling I rarely feel, am never been able to keep (maintain), and have been on the hunt, the chase, the war path towards since before I was a teenager.
It’s that one thing that you think you most desperately want, but just can’t ever get there, and whenever you almost do… it just all slips away again, right before your eyes. And it’s that one thing that only you are in total control over, the one thing you cannot blame on anyone else, or on anything else.
This one is all yours baby.
And for me, it’s just never been enough.
Some call it the chase to perfection, this never enough syndrome I’ve been blessed (or cursed) with nearly all my life. I’ve felt it, I’ve touched it, I’ve held it, all but briefly, yet it was enough to drive you to try be both your best self, and your worst self, all somehow rolled up into one beautifully ugly twist of dull and shiny, matte and sparkly, neutral and utter vibrancy.
And the sad reality seems to be that those brief moments when you do have it, when you are there – you don’t actually fully realize it within those actual live moments, not until you’re not there anymore does the fullness of what was, and is no more, fully plows itself headlong into you.
These last five months have been hard on me. I have fumbled and bumbled my way through the days, weeks, months. I have fallen, slid, clawed, cried, slept my way through many of the passing hours since the March 2020 calendar page was flipped up from that fantastic February. And now here we are, at the end of yet another month, soon to be flipping up that dreaded month of August.
Oh August. I can’t even. August is just so… hard, under “normal” circumstances.
How will I ever be able to navigate this hot mess express of myself into and back out of another August in this current state I’m in?!?!
I’m trying, oh but I am… it’s just that I’m failing it all so miserably right now. Failing all of it so much right now – all of me, all of life, all of the people… but mostly, all of myself.
I’m left standing in frustration, anger, denial, bitterness, sadness, grief, loneliness, guilt, dread… shall I continue? All those things that pull you away, push you down, slowly smother and strangle from inside out.
I realize that what we see and feel within ourselves, is not what the rest of the world sees from the outside, and it’s often not shared in its full color and honesty on the wide world of social media. The selfies, the smiles, the snippets into projected and proposed happiness and contentment are not exactly as they appear.
Sometimes I post and share, sometimes I hide and stay silent. I try live by the word and rule of full authenticity, but I’ve found, the outside world isn’t always so excited and welcoming of “authentic...”
And yes, sometimes, the beast of reality that is rearing inside our heads is also not quite as it seems – the reality we scream at ourselves inside, the standards and expectations we label and measure of ourselves inside… maybe aren’t always quite all that we hear them to be. Ok, let’s be honest, they are never quite all that we hear them to be.
Those inner demons and demands are what we see as our best friends, but are often disguised as our enemies. The voice of not enough, the whisper of defeat, the hiss of faltering disappointment. It holds up a tainted veil that keeps us from fully seeing, hearing, knowing our true selves and our fullest potential. We think it’s what’s trying to drive us forward, to bigger and better… and in a way, yes it is… but it’s also what’s holding us back, keeping us within and without. Within ourselves and without a clear and full view of the person God created us to be, in His image.
Time and again I hear this little voice inside my head reminding me I am a child of God, I was chosen and created exactly how and who I am, by His choosing, and I can’t help but wonder what kind of hurt, sadness, and disappointment it must bring Him as He hears how hard I am on myself, how I put myself down, and value so little of myself.
It’s such a juxtaposition this life we live isn’t it? Ups and downs, goods and bads, happy and sads… so many ebbs and flows continually eroding and eating away at the contentment, hope, and granted grace around us.
There has to be a happy meet-in-the-middle to all of this, right? What is my specific, common, middle ground where I can figure out how to stand with the tension of it all, equally distributed on both sides? Why does my heart and soul cry out with its all-or-nothing nightmarish mantra day after day on all of these days when I’m not “all there” “all in” “all one hundred percent on the money” with every little detail of my life?
And if I’m honest, an even bigger question I fear is… will I have time to find that sweet spot in the course of the next forty-nine days, when I will hopefully yet again find myself physically standing at the base of that mountain, with those same two people beside me, Lord willing.
Will the body, mind, and soul that I carry along with me up and back down the mountain that day be filled with the same strength, willpower, grit, and gratitude that I carried the last time I was there, or will it not?
And… will whatever it is be enough?
Forty-nine days in front of me... and forty-five years of life behind me. Forty-five years of life behind me, that is a lot of pounds gained and lost, that is a lot of food denied and demonized, that is a lot of sweat and burned calories from the pushed punishment I've consistently driven myself to. That is a lot of time spent at war within myself, about myself, for myself.
Aging has brought with it a whole new set of cards and rules, and the older I get, and the harder I fight the never ending battle against the imperfections of my body... the cellulite, the wrinkles, the grey hair (just to name a few), the more I am realizing that I need to make better friends with the me inside and somehow try love the me outside with a much softer relationship filled with more love and grace than I allow it now.
Somehow, somewhere, someway there has to be some place in the middle, in the spot between where I was then, and where I am now, where the war isn't as intense, the stakes aren't quite as high, and the satisfaction of a life well lived is much more prevalent.
#giveyourselfsomegracegirl
#giveyourselfsomegrace
#lawdhavemercy
#giveyourselfsomegracegirl
#giveyourselfsomegrace
Previous Blog post { The Eve of the Lake, Spring 2020 } HERE
