Why?
Because I'm on a partial stress break. Or maybe I should call it a stress brake. I went down to 1 day a week at work just to get a handle on life. I feel like my major, seemingly insurmountable, overwhelming battles are done now. And now I have to figure out how to recover from my war, and find my new 'normal' in life. I'm sure there will be future blogs about the interesting things I'm discovering about rest and exhaustion, etc, but todays' blog is about zits.
Around second trimester of my pregnancy in 2010, I got a zit that creates the third corner of a triangle between my inner eye and the bridge of my nose. To my dismay, the zit never disappeared, and in fact turned into a mole. So not only did I grow a baby from my body in 2010, but I also grew a mole that is almost all I see when I look in the mirror now.
This morning that mole pore became clogged again, and I noticed I had a whitehead on top of the mole, now creating a 3-D model of Mt Baker on my face. Of course today is also the day that I have to go to work. So I knew I couldn't leave Mt. Baker to loom at people, particularly because I had a presentation with 50 grade 7's.
So you know what I did...
....and you know what I looked like then... Mt Baker with a cherry on top!
I knew I couldn't go talk to the grade 7's like this because instead of the usual first question:
"Why is marijuana illegal?"
I'd get asked,
"What's that thing on your face?"
And I just knew I didn't have the strength to face that. My only option was to call in sick... from a zit... Now I appreciate all of you out there who have lovingly made comments about my strength to get through everything... but this particular moment in time is a more accurate reflection of my strength... being scared to talk to grade 7's because I have a zit. And, much to my chagrin, I realized that I couldn't call in sick... not only because its the only day in the week that I work, but also because I had another class that I absolutely had to be there for later in the afternoon, so I couldn't really call in sick for one class, then show up for another later on in the day.
So I went to work. And I emailed, texted, and called everyone I needed to talk to instead of venturing outside my office door. I don't even think I went to the bathroom. One of the Vice Principals stopped by my office at one point and I was honestly expecting him to jump back, aghast at my zit. I'm not sure he even saw it. Could be because my office has low lighting. Or it could be because he's a man.
My grade 7 presentation arrived quickly at 11am. Up until then I had come up with a lot of excuses why I could still cancel it, such as that my laptop powerpack had been lost for the last few weeks and my laptop had run out of power. But not only does everyone know that I know my presentations well enough to not require a laptop, but the librarian also found and returned my missing power pack at 10:40... so I had to go.
As you might guess, the first question with the grade 7 class was "Why is marijuana illegal?" NOT "What's that on your face?" (maybe if it was grade 2's it would have been 'What's wrong with your face?') In the end, it was one of the most interactive, dynamic presentations I've had with a grade 7 class this year.
An hour later I shared my vulnerable experience with a co-worker who is familiar with my recent journey. She said, "What a wonderful opportunity for you to model that its perfectly okay to have a zit; life goes on and you can still be a confident, beautiful woman even if you have acne... because those are exactly the kinds of issues they are dealing with in grade 7." Ya, she's probably right, but to be honest, I don't care about modeling to the grade 7's right now. I just want things to go smoothly... to have no bumps, or zits or uneven pavement in my life for a while.
And then that video that changed my life, Brene Brown's TED Talk, "The Power of Vulnerabilty" came back and hit me in the face.
Click here to watch The Power of Vulnerability
I remembered that life is made up of vulnerability. Without vulnerability we can't know joy, gratitude, creativity, belonging, etc. Vulnerability... zits!... are what life is made up of.
Vulnerability... zits... both literal and proverbial...
- put us in a posture where we are a receptical to receive grace.
- having received grace, we are then in a better posture to practice grace
Vulnerability facilitates an opportunity to put our pride/ego/sin aside in order to make room for others in our lives; its fairly well known that I'm not good at asking for help. Since my ego seems to be too big to do so, God/Life has brought me other opporunities that have forced me to do so... probably so I could experience the fullness of life that comes from relationships.
Vulnerability... zits... help me keep it real. In Brene's TED Talk she talks about how hard we work to perfect life. But life isn't supposed to be perfect. When we are trying to perfect our lives, we're essentially trying to play God, which makes us sick on a whole lotta levels. Therefore zits keep me engaged with my Creator, and help me remember that I am not God. They put me in my place, in a good way. I can't even handle being director of the program I run at work, or being a Mom to my son, never mind God.
I could probably keep going, but I'm not going to wait until this blog is perfect. Maybe you can perfect this entry by telling me about the gifts that your vulnerability/zits bring in your life. Cuz, you know, zits happen to everyone! Zits are the fabric of our lives... not cotton.
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