Most nights begin the same, at least for me they do. I hit my pillow and my eyes close. I was blessed with that ability and I don’t take it for granted. The only time this isn’t true is when I begin praying for one and end up praying for the entire universe and each situation within it – specifically!
I’m of the Christian faith and so I have matured to a place where I can crawl up into my high bed and simply say the words, “Jesus, I need You. We need You! Amen!” I figure He already knows what we need and so I leave it in His hands.
I was giddy to be able to spend an entire day in a large Metropolitan city in North Dakota. I wasn’t just spending my time there haphazardly. I was using my GPS to make the rounds to each and every thrift store location. I like to dress authentically and I can’t seem to find much authentic in a regular department store these days.
Forget the fact that I am un-rich which makes me poor and can’t afford most of those brands anyway.
You may remember from me sharing in other newspaper columns that I am mesmerized by nature. I know that some of you are also! I love to watch bugs bugging whether they crawl or fly. I’m often oblivious to what is right in front of me because when I walk I am usually looking down. If you have ever spent any time with me then you have witnessed me lifting up a rock or a brick or a log just to see how the things that live below us set up house and live together in harmony. How come centipedes and beetles can live together in harmony but humans struggle to even be in the same room together? One of the things I noticed about things that wiggle and crawl and live under the darkness of a rock – is that they are accepting. It must feel like a warm hug to a wiggly worm when an ant or some other kind of thing below allows it into its space without judgment.
I pulled my mighty Ford F-150 pickup truck into the parking lot of a thrift store. I pushed that button that automatically locks all of my doors and begin to walk towards the front door of the thrift store. Per usual – I was looking down instead of looking out. I stopped an abrupt kind of stop as I used my elderly knees to squat down. That hurt but I was victorious in getting down there so there was that! It had rained some earlier in the morning. I saw what I thought was a suffering, very black bug drowning in a puddle. I watched it for a few seconds before I grabbed a little twig and walked back to tap it.
Ever since I was a wee little girl and read the book, “Charlotte’s Web” – it’s difficult for me to kill anything with the exception of wood ticks. Wood ticks are a bug sent by the devil, I am certain!
That’s when I realized that it wasn’t a suffering black bug at all! Rather, it was a fake eyelash with way too much glue on it. It must have fallen off someone’s face in the rain!
There it laid. Alone. Drowned. Used. It’s mate likely remained very alive on someone’s eye batting romance to her lover unaware that there wasn’t symmetry due to the one that fell off. I sat with it a moment full of wonder. Why did it have to happen? Why did this false lash even need to exist? Who among us hoodwinked us into believing our regular lashes weren’t enough? And while we ask that question – let us not forget to ask who among us hoodwinked us into believing our hair, our eye color, our butt size, our leg fat, our lips and our libitos are too much or too little?
Many, many generations of humans had to have sex in order for you to be walking on this earth right now. That’s a biological fact no matter how much you blush reading it. I would bet my next thrift store shopping trip that not one of those menfolk chose the eyelash length of a woman as the reason to make love to her. I would be willing to bet my next new pair of shoes that no man has ever been in bed with a woman wishing that her green eyes could be changed to see – through blue by wearing color changing contact lenses.
I’m preaching to the choir when I say that you are enough.
If we profess to believe in this God of Creation then – how dare we so shamefully try to change His mighty perfection? Would you repaint a Picasso just because you didn’t think the eyelashes in his authentic work are long enough?
This drowned, very used, lonely eyelash was laid before my footsteps in order for me to write this column. I feel entirely sad for all of us who are stricken with the curse called vanity! It is of the world and at the moment, it is making me wish I could live under a rock with wiggly, crawly things that would accept me just the way I am – instead. The world as we know it is much darker than the world that lives under a rock – I’m certain now.
You are enough.
You’ve always been enough.
No need for false lashes! You’ve got Your Father’s eyes! Use them to accept yourselves as perfectly created as you are!
I picked up the lonely lash and set it in my Ford. I’ll bury it under my favorite rock that is home to many creatures below. It will grow to love itself and to find connections there with wiggly, crawly things – just as it is. It will never have to suffer the world and its expectations again!
Thank you for speaking to me Lovely Lonely Lash! I’ll remember you and your very powerful message!
The Blonde on the Prairie is a lover of ND. She is an author and motivational speaker, owner of “Monkey Balls” food truck and Joyologist to the elderly, the disabled and, now, also to children wherever she is needed during the school year and beyond.
