Gracefully

I was only 38 and the first signs of real aging were starting to show.

I had already accepted the heavy creases between my brows, accrediting them to a devastating relationship breakup. And the fact, that I’d had a thought or two…

But the lines around my mouth didn’t seem fair. I wasn’t a smoker.

One of my besties spoke to her plastic surgeon friend, asking what could be done.

His reply was, “Tell her to do nothing. If she starts, she won’t stop”.

I’d seen enough over-done celebrities to know what he meant and since I didn’t actually have a plastic surgery budget, I did do “nothing”...

But… I kept looking in the mirror and hating what I saw…

In contrast, my body image had finally, more or less come right, yet rather unfairly it seemed; been replaced with a new “image issue” – an aging face.

In the gap of time between age 38 and now – acceptance did its work on me, and it seems the advice to do “nothing” was more than right.

Here’s what I’ve learned…

Attention fuels the obsession to be ageless. Noticing those lines and lamenting over them makes them appear [to me] so much worse.

But when I stop giving aging attention, I starve the obsession and it loses its hold on me. And most importantly, not giving attention to it has taken away the power of aging from “lessening me.”

Obsession with beauty and agelessness is a distraction – we desire it, we idolize it and we become slaves to it.

Imagine the time we’d save and the things we’d do… if instead, we marveled…

“You are the one who put me together inside my mother’s body, and I praise you because of the wonderful way you created me. Everything you do is marvelous! Of this I have no doubt”   Psalm 139:13-14 CEV

Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash