On Red Lipstick and Knowing You are Enough

I have a confession to make; I need to come clean. I am worn out and ragged and weary, I am my disintegrated self, my shadow side has come full front and has all but taken over. My allergies are on overdrive and my chocolate consumption has surpassed the normal and legal limits.

I feel competitive, like if I don’t post enough blogs, present enough papers, complete the never ending re-writes for the book contract I’ll be nothing, no one, lost.

I am red and raw from new opportunities that are both thrilling and terrifying because the truth is I don’t have what it takes to pull it off. I am sore and scathing at the same time because I am a forty year old woman who is still considered an emerging leader.

I watch my body morph with age, succumb to hormonal changes and surrender clothes that will never fit again to the consignment store and try to love the new soft curves I see in the mirror.

I lose my keys, every day, in the designer handbag that may as well be a hazmat container. I spend countless minutes each time I need to open a door scraping through tissues and gum and receipts and bottles of herbs to find the keys that I said I’d place in the same pocket next time so this would never happen again.

I have an unpaid speeding ticket on my refrigerator and if I don’t pay it, some piss ant county in a not to be named Midwest state will have my license suspended. I think, maybe that’s a good thing because then I could just sit here all winter by the fire with my cat on my lap and watch the seasons change outside my window.

Naturally, I blame Irenaeus and Augustine and all those fire brand holiness preachers who emphasized original sin and depravity because somehow from that I bought the lie God’s favor had to be earned.

I am afraid. I am scared that I am not now and never will be enough; paralyzed by my own fear that if I don’t produce, create, launch, cultivate, stratedgize, organize…

So I get my hair blown out, buy a new red lipstick, Chanel no. 99, and sit across the table at lunch with a friend who refreshes my spirit reminds me that I’m okay.

I study Scripture, I read the ancient text and I am aware that I come from a long line of busted up, broken folk, that my fore mothers are not likely heroines but over comers of great odds.

I visit strip clubs because the women there remind me that life is hard but God is near. In their embrace I am loved not because of the degrees that hang on my wall but because I have come to sit with them in the darkness. We share bread and drink and our lives and I remember why I was created, I remember it  is all about showing up and stumbling through together, I remember it is all about love.

Praying for you all out there who might be feeling this way too; buy yourself some red lipstick and remember you are loved, you are not alone, you are enough.

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