The mirror is so honest. I see that as we age, things don’t stay within the lines like they should.

Lipstick, red, is creeping toward my chin. Eyebrow hair is waving, like tentacles searching for krill, over the rim of my eyeglasses. And my skin—well, in all the visible and hidden parts of my body, no one can put that back where it came from.

The frame for my canvas is less effective, and the picture shows paints are drifting.

I’m just sitting in “it” and thought—why should my thoughts not wander too, toward you?

But this untidy body is like a name tag, or like a forward to a book, or a flag that waves before we race. This is an introduction, or it can be a goodbye, this body casement. But it is not the story.

The story that breathlessly tells about me—my DNA, is a fingerprint of my ancestors and Creator. And if you look, you may not know my choices, or my sins, forgiven, or senses exchanging information between me and all that other, like the orange oriole last night who flew fast, singing over the deck I vespered at, “It is spring.” And I saw him. And because of that color, the sound, the proximity, so close to me!, The story is wide, not curated. And because my great great grandfather was someone who got energy from being with people, and because I was born fourth to my three older brothers, because I was in clinic with amazing patients all week, and ten bombs dropped on Lebanon a few weeks ago, and because, because, well because of you too, there’s a lot of story here.

When I was nineteen, or twenty-eight, or even many more years later, and before “The Great Drift” (said in a mic’d James Earl Jones deep bass voice with acoustics), I think the carapace might have been my focus much of the time. But focus or no, our humanity is rich, a tasty filo layered baklava, and more than “Me.” Our humanity is increased always because there is a “You.”

Today, three of our youth gave their testimonies in church. The title was “If these pews could talk, they would say…”

I am lonely,

I am struggling and nobody knows,

and I don’t know.

And by the end of their testimony, they each ended with, “If these pews could talk, they’d say…”

God is with me,

there are people struggling and nobody knows it … but God,

and God gave me purpose.

These three youth, normal eyebrows, lip lines intact, dewy skin, went in deep. The mirror can name the drift. But it cannot name the meaning. It cannot tell me that I belong to you, or that you, somehow, are part of me. It cannot hold the sound of an oriole, or the weight of a testimony, or the quiet way a room full of people says, without saying it—

You are not alone.

And maybe that is it, as the lines blur outside the edges—the body may wander, but the story keeps gathering. And it gathers, toward each other and God.

Question:
What part of “Me” are you mistaking for the whole story right now?

Self-care tip:
Remember your story isn’t only in the mirror. Keep on.