As I was getting ready this morning, I was feeling quite professional.
Until I tried to get the hook eye button at the back of my high-waisted pencil skirt clasped.
Thumbing awkwardly with the tiny hook, I kept on sliding the hook right under or over the eye. This happened so many times, I wondered if the hook was broken. After further examination (unzipping my dress turning it around backwards, and checking for the fault in the dress and not in myself) I found that it was in prefect working condition.
This struggle went on for five more minutes until I decided I needed to get a better look at what I was doing by using a full length mirror.
But instead of the reflection helping find the resolution to the gaping back of the skirt, everything was now backwards which exacerbated the problem.
After grunting and groaning long enough for my steaming mug of coffee to turn cold, I decided to give up. At this point I just threw on a suit jacket and called it good.
That was until I bent over to pull on my shoes and my zipper plummeted to the point of no return.
Back to the drawing board.
In the middle of my frustration I thought about changing outfits, I mean is any dress worth the hassle? But at this point it was a matter of principle, and I had hooked enough bra's behind my back to not let this one get the better of me.
Eventually the hook fell into place and I did a little dance in my bedroom. No zipper nose-dive this time.
It was then that I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair was disheveled, I was red in the face from effort, and I looked like a little kid who had just tied his shoes for the first time.
Talk about easily pleased. But why not?
In a world where opportunities are shrinking and more people are looking for them, you have to take what you can just to get through the day-to-day.
So I will take my banner button day!
I have always been a big picture thinker. I have always pooh-poohed the little achievements and pushed on towards the bigger goal.
I am the type of person that will wear myself down by taking on too much. I will peel myself off of the sidewalk, the treadmill, or the computer and shake my own lifeless body, "You can't let a single opportunity pass you by! This, this one right here, might be the one that changes your life!"
And so I sign up for a free lance writing package on The Benefits of Vacation Rental Income in The Florida Keys. Somehow I don't think that's going to be the job that catapults me into the same circles as Hemingway.
It's okay to say no.
I was just offered a radio interview opportunity in New York while I am going to be there for a Book Exposition for work this weekend.
I turned it down.
I don't do things like that. Ever.
From a marketing standpoint it simply looks dumb.
From a soul standpoint it was simply liberating.
The scary thing is that I am finally paving my own road, but the problem is that when you set out on your own path you inadvertently put up road blocks to the ones you've become addicted to traveling. I am starting to see opportunities fade into my peripheral, and the loss of such potential is frightening.
I wonder if I am the only person whose goal for her late twenties is to undo all her doing's. I am hoping to untangle myself from thousands of expectations that I have put upon myself for a thousand different things, and just focus on one, simple, unglamourous opportunity.
The one in which I don't live a divided life.
The one in which I am committed to being still. To waiting on God, even though I am risking being completely forgotten.
My old pastor in Seattle was preaching on Jesus' Resurrection during Easter Sunday. And since I have grown up in the shadow of the steeple, I already knew the story well, so in my arrogance I was kind of half listening while I was doodling little flowers on my notepad. But He said something that stuck with me to this day.
Since I tend to have a hard time imagining Jesus as a real person and not some shimmering, glowing angel in a dress, my pastor painted a very real Jesus on the day of his Resurrection.
He said, "Do you know what the biggest risk Jesus had in ascending into heaven? It wasn't that people wouldn't believe he existed, it was that his life on earth might be forgotten."
Jesus came to save the world, and even He risked being forgotten.
I am not Jesus.
I know.
I don't risk the chance or being forgotten when I die, it's an inevitability.
But that's fine, my identify isn't found in this paper thin existence. It never will be. My identity is found in that Man who risked being forgotten when He left his mark of love on the world.
But while I am here stumbling through button hooks and brokenness, I am realizing its OK to fade out a little, while you are tuning up for your dance.
We all know that people say seeing is believing, but in a fallen world where our perception of life is the only sight we have, we can't trust the way we view the world. We can't try and create our lives according to some image we see backwards in a mirror, one that is only a version of the truth.
I actually had to walk away from the mirror to button up my little old dress, because the reflection wasn't accurate, it was affected to the point of making it harder to get the job done.
From my dress to my desk, I have been looking at everything backwards for so long.
That defective mirror is what other people tell me I should be, should look like, should want, should work for, should get excited about.
The truth is seeing isn't believing.
Believing when you can't clearly see, that is belief.
So my dress hasn't fallen down today and I consider that a small accomplishment.
I wonder if the radio station in New York would like to interview me about that.
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