look for her {because there's always someone who feels like less}

I sit maybe five feet away, watching women I think of as friends clumped together, laughing.  They touch each other’s arms and smile, a glossy photograph of friendship.  And for a moment, I see only lip gloss and accessories. I forget that these images are a mirage, an illusion, a fashionable scam.

I had tried to talk to a few of them not half an hour before, but they had places to be and no time to talk to me.  An invitation I’d made had been politely refused.

Now I sit in the chair watching them, thinking,

“So today it’s my day to feel like less.”

Slowly they untangle, lifting handbags in their arms, still flushed with their exclusivity and chosenness, feeling full, delighted by belonging.  They have managed, at least in brief, to make each other feel beautiful and worthwhile.  This is a gift women give each other.

I know how that feels.  I’ve been at the heart of the clump.  Feeling loved that way soothes like a drug, like an adrenaline high.  Just for a bit, we collectively forget our comparisons, our haunting imperfections, the lack we all gather in our arms and stuff in our purses.  The love of my sisters, their arms about my shoulders, their shared laughter, it makes me forget the moments I stand looking in the mirror thinking about how I’m less beautiful than I want to be.

Our collective strength heals everyone except the person we can’t see that day, the one sitting five feet away wishing someone thought her worth their reach.

These friends walk past me, peeling away from each other, lifting a hand, offering me light smiles, softly saying they’ll see me.

Yes, maybe next time you’ll see me.

The thought broods, dark.

And in the morning, it still broods.  I sit in the half light trying to wake up, holding a mug of coffee in one hand, massaging a sore muscle with the other, trying to figure out how I’m going to do today.  I scroll through posts on Facebook.  It is the wrong first place to look, the wrong space for trying to see.  It’s all a construction, after all.  The pictures tell a fiction I am waiting to hear, primed to swallow.  These same friends of mine smile back at me, frozen in giddy reverie together.  It feels like a taunt.  And suddenly I know they made plans while I sat five feet away, watching them celebrate each other.  And not one of them chose to invite me.

The next thought stings.

I never was the one people wanted to invite.

I suddenly know a list of reasons why I feel alienated, why I am never quite enough. I consider how to remake myself into someone more desirable, someone invited.

We women always chase the things we think will proclaim our value—the love of a man, a best friend, inclusion in a certain group.  We look for someone who will say, “I have chosen her.  She’s mine,” someone who will collect our likeness and frame the glossy view.  Our greedy hands cling as we collect our data, the details that prove we matter, the temporary balm for all our empty competitions.  Our insecurity and complaint are merely self absorption wearing sack cloth.  They are not more noble attitudes than the glamorous self absorption that blinds us to each other.

I respond to the flood of emotion the only way I know how.  I slide over, closer to where Kevin sits already lost in the whispers of God, and I reach for Truth.

And first He speaks this (and maybe today someone else needs to hear it too?), because at the start He always shines light on my darkness:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul (Mark 8: 34-36)?

I sit back against the couch, pressing my hand flat against the side of my leg, feeling the words gentle, like a river over me.

Don’t you see that you have become fully focused on yourself, on gaining the whole world?  

But he made himself nothing (Philippians 2:7).  He had no beauty or majesty to attract you to him, nothing in his appearance that you should desire him (Isaiah 53:2). He was rejected by humans but chosen by me.  He is precious to me. (1 Peter 2:4). And your life is now hidden with him (Colossians 3:3). You are clothed with Him (Galatians 3:27).  And yet, you don’t look so much like him, sitting there brooding, making an idol out of human favor.  He did not entrust himself to them, for he knew what was in each person (John 2:24,25).

There’s nothing glamorous about a cross.

You are my special possession (1 Peter 2:9).  I have engraved you on the palms of my hands (Isaiah 49:16). I have invited you to be with me, to stay with me, to dwell with me.  Don’t you see how truly valuable you are, how beautiful?  Beloved, why do you entrust yourself to someone else?

In the morning He says these things, His voice rushing through me just that way, and the wealth of His words fill up the gnawing empty.  Only He ever really satisfies my hunger.

And then He points me to this, whispered deep, these words about the One I wear:

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted…to provide for those who grieve–to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61:1-3).

And I repent of the heavy truth that I have stood by, not seeing, giddy with belonging.  I have snatched up our collective sister strength and held it in my own hands and have not opened my arms to share it with the ones who, today, feel like less.

But the truth is that no matter how we all look frozen in the smiling photographs that hide our insecurity, we have our purses stuffed with lack.  And the enemy breathes the same ugly lie in every ear.  I’m not–you aren’t—the only one who sometimes believes she will never be good enough to be wanted.  But see, He has always wanted us, because He is good enough.

“Don’t break the bruised reed (Isaiah 42:3),” He whispers at last, soul-deep, wrapping me in grace.  “Look for her, just there, sitting five feet away.  Wrap your arms around her. Tell her she’s mine and she is beautiful, for I love her, and I have chosen her.”