Shower Epiphanies.

I love the fact that when I am in the midst of my shower routine, singing "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)" I have some of my best thoughts. Often they are about my life and the immeasurable blessings that fill it. Tonight's shower epiphany was no different. In this case, something that a friend said to me the other night suddenly became crystal clear and took on a new meaning.

On Sunday night, we had dinner with friends that we enjoy immensely. Throughout the conversation of the evening, I complimented my friend on her daughter's cute face, pretty hair, and infectious voice and she mentioned her beautiful, baby-soft skin. I don't remember her words well enough to quote her directly, but they were something along the lines of, "Her skin is so soft, I often wonder how skin goes from the beautiful soft stuff she has to what I have." I think that at that point we started a conversation about skin care and also relating to the fact that my skin looks terrible from all of the running and working out that I have been doing in the last six months.
I didn't realize that over forty-eight hours later, that conversation would cause me to have a revelation.

This evening I ran a 10k on my treadmill, Facebooked a little, and then came upstairs to shower and hit the hay (and watch Dexter with the hottie I married). After my shower, I was washing my face and putting on my night cream. As I was doing this, I was thinking about how I have spent a fortune on skin care in the last year and none of it seems to be doing the trick. Then I reminded myself, yet again, that it is probably not a short-coming of the products so much as a result of the fact that having babies changes one's body chemistry and working out six days per week makes for a sweaty, greasy person.

It was at this point that I looked up from my counter and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and it dawned on me, "I have earned this face." My face has changed remarkably in the last few years. First it got really fat, then it got even fatter, now it is getting skinny again, and it has gotten somewhat pimply lately. I also noticed (amidst my epiphany) that it looks harder. That's right, harder. My face looks tired some nights and I think it looks like the face of an adult.

There are some lines in certain places and I have gotten freckles in the places where I get a tan. My skin is not as firm and I don't think that I will ever look as fresh-faced as I do in some pictures I have seen of myself. But, I earned my face. I earned it as an adult who worries about making it from paycheck to paycheck. I earned it as an adult who has carried and borne children, then stayed up with them all night and worried about them falling off of swing sets. I earned it having to talk about and face adult things. I earned it by getting fat and then fighting my way back to being healthy.

I'm not saying I won't have to remind myself of that from time to time. I'm not saying that baby soft skin isn't loverly. I just think that babies don't have weathered skin because they haven't had experiences. I've always been determined to be proud of my experiences, so I think that I should start being proud of the ways that they have changed me as well.