More

Just thinking as I look in the mirror and dress for a date with my husband that time is starting to show itself. I fight it as we all do, but I know it will win. As I glance down at the bathroom scale which is so neglected that it is heavy with dust, I realize that I am more than the number would be if I worked up the courage to step upon it. All of the experiences I've had, people I've met, tears I've cried, emotions I've felt amount to more than the size of jeans I can squeeze into. Maybe if I wore my inside on the outside, I could rock a muumuu! Instead, here I am trying to dress this mutton up as though it were lamb. Bring on the Spanx, booty-control jeans, and Oil of Olay. DRAT!! I'd love to be one of those people who 'forgets' to eat and when I meet someone who says, "Gosh, I missed lunch," I must fight the urge to slap them. Seriously??? I wake up wondering what I can have for breakfast and planning lunch over my first cup of coffee. I wear control top hose as a remedial measure for moments of dietary indiscretion. If bad food choices were skeletons, my life would be a graveyard. Where are the professional mourners??? Bring on that parade! Let's get behind a cause we can really celebrate!

You may ask, "Where is she going with this?" The answer is, I don't have the faintest clue. All I know is that every day of my life, I've woken up wanting more. Yearning to be more than a particular size in clothes or number on a scale, I want to matter! Let my life be something that left an indelible mark somewhere that will not be forgotten. I hate the thought of getting lost in the sea of humanity like a single atom amongst all of the atoms that make up the universe. Somehow, I long for the essence of who I am to be different from anyone else and to be valuable not just in spite of it but BECAUSE of it. I'd be the tattoo of a drum that could be distinguished from any other. Like the cry of a newborn child, my mother could single me out in a nursery full of screaming babies. I'd ink myself on the walls of caves so that thousands of years from now, traces of me would remain.

Doesn't that seem absurd? Why should it matter to me that I counted for something? Maybe my yearning is foolishness, but perhaps it is inherently human too. After all, why build the highest skyscraper in the world or the Egyptian pyramids if not to leave a marker of your existence? Why paint the most beautiful landscape or compose the loveliest song if not to aspire to beauty? Most of all, why bother?

It is here that I come full circle! I bother because it matters...to me and probably to each and every one of us if we permitted ourselves really feel. I bother because I believe it matters to God. Otherwise, every breath and each step are taken in vain.