Doors

“I can’t believe I’m 34 and trying to find myself” I think for the thousandth time.

In this season of life, where I’m trying to treat myself with patience and grace, I remind myself of all the times in the past when I was trying to find out who I am.

How many times before have I had to resculpt my identity from the rubble of life’s previous chapter? A milestone birthday, a graduation, a dream job ripped away, a walk down the aisle, the joy of new life, a friend’s final goodbye: doors opening and closing to different versions of me all born from the need to survive in these strange new worlds. These spaces that look something like the before times and yet somehow not quite right feel like the gap left behind by a lost tooth. A photo of joy that now holds sadness, a previously forgettable song that now must be played at full volume and sung with my whole chest, an ordinary piece of fruit that sets off peals of laughter, a necklace that I’ll never take off, a someone new asking for snuggles and breakfast and “Mommy will you open this for me?”

This change feels different somehow. It is as often a look back as it is a look forward. It is a reexamination of the foundations that I built my self image on and a probing to discover just how deep the cracks go. It is a forced change of internal dialogue. It is waging war with insecurities and doubts that have dug into my very brain like a parasite demanding to be fed. It is learning that the peace my anxiety convinced me would never exist, that I was unworthy of, is real and can be mine. It is beautiful and messy and exhausting.

Sometimes it has me crying and beating on the door of my previous existence to be let back in, not because it was better, but because its familiar.

Sometimes growth is less fresh green leaves and more scorched earth and manure, something is on fire and there’s shit everywhere.

I remind myself to look to Christ instead of the storm. Work to remember that a small success is still a success. Hug a little tighter. Laugh a little more. Try to forgive myself for all of the years of being my own bully. Take the picture. Tackle the challenge. Wear the bright colors/weird socks/ hair style/ whatever. Try the new thing.

Swallow my fears and doubts and bring my authentic self to the table and then choose to believe people when they say they like who I am. Let people love me. Love myself. Find ways to rejoice in the search and remember this for when the next door opens and I must begin again.