It’s so sweetly tragic and ironic how fast I can fall from cloud nine.
Skipping through life, laughing and joining in, feeling treasured and carefree. Then something happens, and the full-length mirror is held up to me, and I get to stop and see the gross parts of myself. It doesn’t matter that it’s gentle, it hurts, and my humanness wants to recoil.
I want to react. I want to excuse away why I do what I do. I want to defend myself. I want to point out the things I do that are good. I want to remind people that they fail too. I want to say that it’s none of your business what I do, and that it doesn’t matter because I’m so much better than most people.
Then it just stings, because I realize it’s true. It’s true that I mess up. It’s true that I break my word. It’s true that I hurt people’s feelings. It’s true that I give up on things. It’s true that I am selfish. Then I realize I can’t snap my fingers and make it go away. My worldly anger turns into righteous sorrow, and I am merely defeated, ashamed, ready to give up and go hide forever, away from light.
And then, in that moment, with the snot and mascara running down my face, feeling stripped and ugly of spirit, I feel a touch. Gentle, like soft rain and puppy fur, it touches my soul and I can breathe deeply in the sweet whispered assurance that God is with me. That touch does not dismiss my problems and failures, actually it doesn’t fix anything. But I am reminded, that if I am willing, I can have all of his strength to work on those problems. The grace of God renders me capable of greater kindness and fortitude. Without it I am merely a human, young and foolish. With it, I am still just a young and foolish girl, but I do know there is something stronger than myself to which I can cling, something that will shape me, in pain and in happiness, into a more holy young woman.
Even as I write these last lines, I feel my heart turning within me. I know what is right, and I will be damned if it is merely my pride and tears which carry me away from doing it.
