Linking up with Five Minute Friday today!

The theme:

This morning, I went for a quick run on the treadmill before Red woke up. The air was cool and crisp outside, and spring has sprung itself all over out little town. So I did the most logical thing and went down into our scary dark basement and ran on a strip of rubber for 30 minutes while staring at some cinder blocks and a dead cricket.

Anyhow.

After the run, I felt all proud of myself and well, studly, and started to sprint up the stairs to the kitchen, all full of vim and vigor and saucy good feelings. “Hi, you!” my muscles all shouted to me, “You cutie pie! You are going to CONQUER THE DAY, I tell you, you saucy thing!”

And then I missed a step because my muscles were too busy talking, and I fell down the stairs.

Let me clarify – our stairs are STEEP and NARROW and rather Silence of the Lambs treacherous, and if you start to fall down them, for some forsaken reason it is rather hard to correct yourself and UN fall.

Or even, really, slow down with all the falling.

Nope. This was a full-out, Gone with the Wind, Scarlet O’Hara tumbling down in her hoop skirt kinda dramatic moment, except I was in some ratty running shorts, plaid socks, and a t-shirt that has holes in the armpits. Don’t know why, really. Evidently when you keep t-shirts for as long as I do, and run in them over and over, they eventually give up on you and disintegrate.  Oh, and I don’t speak in a southern accent or have a penchant for saying, “Fiddley-Dee!” When I was done with all the falling, I should have, perhaps, tried for a “fiddley-dee” but all I could squeak out instead was something unsavory that rhymes with “Sam it! Sam it all! SAM SAM SAMMITY SAM!”

I sighed with enough gusto to blow a few cricket carcasses across the floor, gathered myself from the very unladylike contortion at the bottom of the stairs, wiped off the dust of forty billion dead bugs from my hiney,  and clomped up the stairs.

Not so saucy, anymore, are you? I thought, as my dignity and I limped up to take a shower.

And then, I spied it. A reflection. Of me. In the full length mirror right outside our bathroom door. A very saggy, sore, plaid socks wearing, with bad posture and a bad attitude to match, version of me.

Now let me tell you two things:

1. DON’T ever put a full length mirror right outside your bathroom door. There are just too many incidents where slinking out with a towel, or less, happens, and who really needs to see all that in the garish light of day? Or anytime, for that matter?

2. But, if you DO catch a fleeting glimpse of a sad Momsie, all worn out by life and a treadmill and evil stairs, give yourself a break. Laugh a little. Not in the mean way. More like in the way that those Dove commercials (the soap, not the chocolate) would want you to do.

Why? Well, the part that the Dove commercials always leave out is this: God MADE you. And He is the most beautiful, creative Father… like EVER. So, it follows that: He makes beautiful things.

Is it NOT a huge relief to know this? Especially on days like today.

It is a relief. To know we are so loved. And we don’t have to fix or mend or try or gain or lose or even be balanced and basically graceful.  We can just be loved.

I am relieved. I have no merit badge I need to earn. This is a profoundly good thing, because if my gracefulness was part of the bargain with God? Perish the thought. Sometimes I can’t even walk down a hallway without bumping into a wall. I don’t have to be graceful to have grace. Thank you, Jesus!

And stairs? Stairs are hard, people.

(Oh, yes. Pun totally intended. I may lack the ability to manage straight lines, but, as God is my witness, I’ll never go pungry again.)