I've Never Felt More Beautiful

This year I’ve been doing a LOT less looking at other people, and I have started to notice how I feel a lot more.

How I feel.

Not just my emotions, but being able to regularly hear my mind and being present inside of my very own body.

I can’t remember a time that I’ve felt so much like myself. Maybe not since those childhood days when self-consciousness and being cool weren’t even on the radar — just dreaming, playing, laughing, being with friends, and creating grand things just to create them.

To be clear, my life is not any more perfect now than before.

We still have bills to sort and insurance to grapple with, calendars to weave together in some kind of way that works, and hard decisions to make. We still have rough moments in relationships and babies that scream no matter your heroic efforts to provide, soothe, and comfort.

There are still days that I’m tired, grumpy, insecure, or just plain dissatisfied.

But here’s something I’ve noticed that feels deeply profound to me.

There is something about not constantly feeding myself the projected lives of others that has made me so much more aware of my own good life, my own goals, my own needs, my own limits, and my own beauty, with absolutely no sense of having to prove or qualify it to anyone, or compare it to anyone else’s.

The most accurate word I can attach to that is freedom!

Call it denial or delusion, or wanting to prove some point about body positivity, but…

when I look in the mirror, I see a girl who has become a woman and is blooming beautiful in the prime of her life.

Fact: I weigh more than I ever have (2 babies in 2 years largely to thank for that, as well as lady genes that just run tall and broad in my family). My face is starting to show signs of being well into my 30’s, with laugh lines and a lack of that teen-skin elasticity that, in the moment, felt like it could never go away.

I have to work a lot more on taking care of myself while seeing what appears to be less of a result in the “beautiful” “fit“ “rested” or “impressive” departments.

That has made me ask, what’s the point of taking care of yourself?

That concept has taken on a more whole, holistic, grace-filled meaning in my life.

Why prioritize taking care of yourself? For me, right now, it’s to be able to live this life with more quality — more mental health, more physical longevity, more spiritual peace, more real relational connection that feeds my human experience with so much more joy and confidence.

It’s a process. I have definitely not “arrived” and I’m still working on it with a lot of grace for myself and others, but…

when I look in the mirror, I see a woman who has overcome in her life, a friend who is learning again how to value, trust, and make space for her own voice, thoughts, and opinions.

I’m feeling like I’m home in myself again, where it’s Sam and a kaleidiscope of the miracle-stuff that is being alive, and there is God, my best friend.

There is rest and play in my life, two things that, in their purest forms, cannot be wrangled for productivity or proving. They just are, and they are like a wellspring feeding life to everything else that is seen.

There is work that exists within its appropriate moments for my life now, work I enjoy, that feels challenging, and that delights others, but doesn’t spread like a weed, choking out other living things.

How is the quality of your play? How is the quality of your sleep? How is the quality of your work? Not the quantity, but the quality.

When Griffin gets laughing while looking into my eyes and I see her snaggly little teeth that aren’t finished growing yet, I know — this is the thing I want to remember forever, the thing I want tattooed on my life, the thing I’ll remember when I come to the end of my time here.

When John and I lay on our bed at the end of our long days, likely fresh out of some kind of squabble or disagreement (an 8 and a 4 #emotions), and somehow end up looking at each other from our pillows, talking about something silly and laughing like kids, and I see his ruddy freckles on his 30-something shoulders and remember who he was when he was 13 and 18 and 24, — how he was on our wedding night or in near-mystical moments on nighttime car rides when the music hit just right and the breeze came blowing through our hair — I know that this present moment is my gold of life.

Every moment is a chance for presentness, an opportunity to live quality and let it linger, a moment you’ll remember as your reason for living.

When you’re doing that, operating in that, practicing that — notice how you feel.

When I look in the mirror and see all the ways that body has grown and grown, and my face and arms and belly and legs all feel like fullest (maybe even too-full) versions of how they were made, and I start to feel that hint of disapproval from what I or others might think should be for me…

You should be thinner. You’d look prettier. I’ve seen you look better. Who do you think you are? You’re trying too hard to make friends. You’re trying too hard to be liked. You’re not trying hard enough. I don’t trust you.

I feel a kick and a roll inside my belly, my very home of self, shared with another life, growing him whether I’m thinking of it or not. Miracle.

I am reminded again that caring for myself doesn’t always equal losing a certain number of pounds or fitting into a certain article of ideal clothing to impress myself (more likely to impress others).

I am reminded again that why I do things is more important than doing them, and that is the very key to sustainability of any kind.

I am reminded that the devil loves to steal from us, kill things that are alive and flourishing, and destroy anything that’s good.

I am reminded that other people are flawed and very much in their own process.

I am reminded that freedom begets freedom. Living in MY freedom, with confidence, joy, and integrity, shows a path that can be taken by anyone, from any starting point.

I am reminded that I am a tent of life. Tending to that tent without the shoulds and with a lot more quality, however unmeasurable, intangible, unimpressive, or unseen, is the very stuff that makes up a life lived well.

And I have never felt more beautiful.

WIth love and a fresh Friday free-write,

Sam