IN-Security System

This is super personal and hard to talk about...might as well put it on the internet!

When I start thinking about life insurance and retirement, I feel really old. It’s like I am physically carrying around each of my years – some of them twice – trying to haul them over the strange alien landscape of compound interest and term rates. My husband asked me the other day what I pictured for us in ten years. I said, “Ugh, I’ll be nearly forty!” in exactly the same way I might say, “I’ll have one foot right there in the grave.”

That’s pretty much the only time I feel like that, though.

Most of the time, I feel distressingly young. And small. And kind of runty.

I’m nearly the youngest of my cousins and of my close friends. And while it’s definitely a good idea to surround yourself with wiser, more mature, or at least more experienced people – sometimes I carry around my lack of years like a stone in my heart.

Please love me and accept me, pleads my soft baby soul. Please let me into your grown up club. Look! Look! I’m married too. See? I know it hasn’t been 10+ years and I know I know nothing about making a relationship last. But I have this ring, you know, and it has a few years on it.

Look! Look! I’m a mother too. See? I made this human being with my own body and he’s still alive 6 months later. Sure, I know nothing about potty training or the first day of school or college graduation. But surely these stretch marks still count right?

Look! Look! I’m an awesome cook too! You wouldn’t believe the deliciousness I can produce with no fancy equipment and severely limited access to ingredients.

Look! Look! I’m just as Christian-y as you. I work for a Christian organization. I go to two churches. I was a missionary! I know I’m a pain in the ass who uses words like “ass.” Is that what’s keeping me out of your club?

Holy Pathetic, Batman.

I mean jeez, why do I care? Why does it bother me so much when the women I look up to don’t really notice me? I am not five. I am a grown ass woman. I know I am because the term life insurance rate index told me so.

It doesn’t help my neurosis that I have two kids in middle school. I am definitely and legitimately waaaaaay younger than the rest of the parents at the school. There is no reason I should have my crap together (and boy do I not) but it’s still hard to see every single other person know what is going on and the proper response to it. Meanwhile, I am Bambi on the frozen pond of parenthood. I feel much like I did my freshman year of high school, keeping my nerdy, bespectacled eyes open, trying to figure out how the regular, non-homeschooled kids acted so I wouldn’t stick out like a doof.

I am forever trying to catch up to the cool kids.

The worst part is, this deep, integral need of my runty little heart severely clashes with pretty much every other part of my personality. Sometime shortly after my birth, I decided to go my own way in life. I do things (and say things!) that break the rules and upset people. I don’t really intend to make anyone angry or upset; I am just trying, in my own bumbling way, to follow God as hard as I can. Also I have bad filters between my brain and my ridiculous, snarky mouth.

I want to dance, freely, without shame or insecurity, to the music God is playing.

And almost as much, I want the people I admire to accept and respect me.

I am beginning to think that one of those things is not going to happen. And that hurts me.

What about you? Do you feel confident? Or do you wish you could run with the cool dogs?