I was agitated all week. I felt jittery and not quite myself, and like I couldn’t
really focus on anything properly.
One of the big things happening this week, which sort of
feels like it shouldn’t be a big thing, but really sort of is, is that I
submitted my profile and had my picture taken to be in the Time Out New York
singles issue which is coming out in a few weeks.
It’s something that really should be sort of fun and silly,
and it has been, but it’s also been strangely unnerving. I feel really exposed already, and the
magazine isn’t even out.
The process of putting together my profile was
illuminating and had me thinking a lot this week about who I am, who others see
me to be, and how I present myself to the world. And, to be honest, it had me comparing myself to everybody
else. Which I try not to do, but
there I was doing it.
Something about this process of trying to boil down my
character to a few lines and picture, and feeling like there was so much to
communicate about who I am and who I’m not, and feeling, as a single woman,
that there is a very dominant
expectation out there about who I should
be. An image or perception that
I’m constantly being measured against.
As a woman, I apparently should be
Smart but not too intellectual,
Sexy but not too slutty,
Innocent but not too virginal,
Put together but not too high maintenance,
Sporty but not too butch,
Successful but not too aggressive…
Whether I buy into it or not (and I try not to), it’s still
a lot of expectation, and it can get you pretty agitated pretty quickly.
Whether you buy into
it or not, there’s a whole industry out there, a whole culture out there, based
on telling us that we’re somehow not enough, and that a product will fill that
ugly hole of our not-enough-ness.
The other day Heather and her fiancé Mike and I were
chatting about the Singles issue, and about Time Out,
and about other New York publications.
We got into talking about the sort of rivalry that exists between Time
Out New York and New York Magazine.
Mike said something like, “Time Out is pretty happy just to be who they
are, but I feel like New York Magazine sort of wishes it was the New
Yorker.” And I said, “They’re
never gonna be the New Yorker…they should just be themselves. They’re fine how they are.”
Then suddenly it struck me that this is excellent (and age
old) advice. Really good advice. That’s really hard to follow. Everybody thinks New York Magazine is
just fine...except for New York Magazine.
And maybe they’d be a lot happier if they just owned up to who they are.
The psalmist writes:
Oh Lord, I am not proud;
I have no haughty looks.
I do not occupy myself
With great matters,
That are too hard for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like a child upon its mother’s breast.
I want you to think for a moment, of the last time you were
calm.
Really calm.
The last time your soul was quiet, like a child upon its
mother’s breast.
I don’t know where or when that moment was for you, but for
me, it was marked by a sense of wholeness, and completion. Of being 100% myself, and knowing that
it was 100% enough.
Like a child, I was warm, and fed,
and loved, and supported,
and I knew with certainty,
that I had no need
and that I was good.
I was enough.
We are enough.
To live in light of that realization
is to live with a quiet soul,
to live like a child on its mother’s breast.
We are enough.
To live in light of that realization
is to allow the din of voices
telling us who we should
be
to fade slowly into silence.
We are enough.
And we need only concern ourselves
with just today, in front of us.
Tomorrow, we can worry about tomorrow.
I am learning to trust God, not to make an idol of all those
voices that have something to say about who they think I should be. I’m learning that every moment has the
possibility to be that moment of calm
assurance of a quieted soul. That
we are who God made us, and that is enough.
We finish the sermon together at St. Lydia’s. Please share a story from your
experience that’s been brought up by the text or my words.
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