twenty-one

Every year around this time I subconsciously do the same thing. I make an inventory of my life, decide that I’m unsatisfied with certain aspects of it, and set out to create change. It’s not like this is an active decision. In fact, I usually don’t even realize I’m doing it until I start noticing that uneasy feeling, that feeling of needing to do things differently, of looking at myself and not being happy. This isn’t self depreciating at all, but, I figured out today, a need for constant reevaluation and moving forward with life. It’s like my brain is sending me signals: you’re older, you should be wiser, should be better, should be doing something to make yourself better. So in that light, the belated birthday post that I really couldn’t have made until today, not understanding why I was in a funk.

Inevitably, this self evaluation comes up dissatisfactory, and I turn to changing the obvious – how I look (this is probably why last year I cut all my hair off to chin length). This year I spent hours and hours looking at clothes, looking at hair and makeup and thank God not doing anything about my obsession, because the bank can’t handle that right now. This European culture is so centered around appearance that it’s practically exhausting. Everyone, it seems, is constantly buying things. The girls wear so much makeup that you can’t tell what their faces ought to look like. At first it made me uneasy because I stood out so much, because I don’t spend an hour figuring out what to wear every day and doing my face unrecognizable to the world. Now it makes me sad because so no one needs to do that. Being so worried about how you look means you aren’t happy with how you are on the inside, and that’s not the kind of person I care to be.

The boy and I have been making a conscious effort to read the Bible together every day, and in addition to bringing us closer on several levels, I’m starting to see things in a different light. None of these things here matter – not clothes or how people see you or going and to be seen. There’s a great song by Lecrae, “Identity,” which says “I’m not the shoes I wear, I’m not the clothes I buy, I’m not the house I live in, I’m not the car I drive … nothing on this green earth, identity is found in Christ.” Proverbs 31 talks about the same thing: "Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." I want to be like that, not like these girls here – or at home, for that matter. Not just for when I get married, but for me. There’s a great website about this if anybody’s interested:  http://www.gci.org/bible/poetry/prov31.

This year I spent the birthday happily – just a quiet night at a café with some friends and live music and a sinfully delicious chocolate cake. There was no going out, no pressuring to drink or get drunk, and for that I was so grateful. I’ve found good friends here, the kind that accept you for who you are. And, although it sounds so painfully worn out and cliché, the fact is that people who want you to be someone you aren’t really aren’t people you want around you anyway.

We also went to Loch Ness on Saturday – and no, we did not capture the monster. But we had an incredible time. I’m anxious to go back to the Highlands in the spring, and hopefully get another few hours of glorious sunshine.