Why can’t I feel comfortable in my own skin?

My own space?

With my own voice?

With my long feet that I stumble over and fall up the stairs and knock the toes against the furniture…

How I want a bumper sticker to proclaim that I’m the best at something, anything.

Thirty eight years of sucking in my stomach and pushing up my nonexistent breasts and trying, trying, trying to walk like a model in heels without falling over.

Stifling the anxieties, pasting on that lipglossed smile that doesn’t quite reach my eyes…attempting hairstyle after hairstyle, trying to find who I am in a bottle from the salon.

Swinging wide on the pendulum of too much and never enough, desperate for balance but afraid to get off the seesaw.

Realizing that I’m failing miserably to hide my lessthan, nevergoodenough despite all the effort to appear ok.

When love is mere imagination, romance in books, a fantasy in movies, discussed at length in the Bible and at church…it’s hard to learn and practice when you don’t know what it looks like, how it tastes, the sound it makes, the exquisite scent of it, or how it feels.

Constantly looking over my shoulder to see who’s watching and listening is exhausting. Even thousands of miles away, the voices remind me that I am worthless.

And I still believe it.

They’re often louder than my present. They’re often overwhelming in their nearness.

And when I hear that tone in my own voice?

They succeed in destruction.

How I equally shrink into myself to not inconvenience others yet rail against everything to be noticed.

Accepting that I am just the right size for this space where God wants me.

It’s a concept that I must relearn and practice and remember every moment of every day.

So I can teach it to my children.

That they are important and loved and noticed and complete.