The Dress

It was an amazing find, this dress. Trunk show, insane amounts of estrogen flowing through the vents of the venue. Curvy women strutting their stuff. Grabbing, like only women can, at material sewn in flattering but very stylish ways only for them. It was a lesson in female bonding. I couldn't help but laugh at the mayhem and join in myself. I found a random room, packed to the gills with stuff. I had only a small wedge of floor space on which to try on practically pilfered dresses. The first dress was a smash up top, but a disaster down below. The second dress: unbelievable. I could tell it looked awesome just by the way it felt. The peoples faces when I stepped out of the wedge room attested as well. No question here, even though there was no mirror, it was coming home with me! And for such a price! My roommate was getting swept away in the surf of large breasts and flabby arms reaching, pulling, vying for fashion that would suit them. She was digging, I was digging, once we both pulled ourselves out of the racks to find that we had picked up the same exact dress in our respective sizes, independent of one another, we laughed, then I proceeded to try it on over all of my clothes. A sight to behold, but like I said: mayhem..

Having my fill of my svelte peers I pressed toward the check out line. All around me women. Women all around. Such costumes! Such makeup! There isn't a script for this. It was like for one brief moment, we all got to leave our "other-than-perfect" body image issues outside and were just simply women. I didn't feel judged, I actually felt beautiful. That's not a feeling I experience very often. It was nice.


I am going to be wearing this dress in a wedding in about 5 weeks This weekend we are adding length to the bottom of it so it is floor length. I put this dress on and my heart starts beating loud. I have this rush of emotions. Part of me thinks, "wow! what a dress", the other part of me is mocking my attempts at wearing it. It is this intense tug of war between what my eyes see and what my heart sees. I know that I should wear this dress, no matter the ripples that show that have nothing to do with the material. The voices that periodically run through my head, the ones that made me want to be invisible, I am still so afraid of those voices that I feel guilty for putting people through the agony of seeing me. Not just seeing me, but noticing me. The angel on my left shoulder tells me that it is good for me to risk and to accept myself the way that I am right now. The impostor, on the right, tells me I should just call Alecia and accept the label of failure because people were right when they said that no one would ever be attracted to me because of the way that I looked. Interpretation from a little heart: They'll all be grossed out, I'm repulsive. Better not ever be seen like that. Keep a low profile. Maybe if my personality is big enough they won't notice that I'm fat and ugly.

At this point, throwing in the towel becomes not an option. I have just given my motives away. Even though there are moments when I have a panic attack and all I want to do is run away, I cannot, in good conscious, write this and then back out of the wedding. Especially when I am always the one saying that you have to fight for your heart.

Nope. I'm going to wear it. And I'm going to forget all of the "shoulds and oughts" that plague me every day of my life and enjoy myself, and "the Dress", and delight in celebrating what love does to two people who are willing to fight for each other. Maybe I'll even forget myself for a while and dance.

It's that time again

Birthdays. what is it about birthdays that make you take stock of your last year of living life to see if it measures up to some kind of imaginary self measuring stick of loathing you just end up beating yourself with? (I know. it was a run on sentence)

In a few days I will have officially ended my 28th year of life on the earth and be officially labeled, "twenty-eight". What have I done in my twenty-eighth year? I sold all of my belongings (which, let me just tell you...was a hell of a lot), and I moved half way across the country. Something to be noted for sure. I discovered some intense realities of my brokenness. And have become more weak and humbled by my weakness then ever before.

All that to say: my glorious year is over.

I was asking Jesus today about disappointment and hope. And I was sincerely wondering why people hope in the first place. It has seemed to do me little to no good to hope for anything. I feel like the majority of the time it ends up being a complete blow out of a disappointment. Are my expectations too high? That's probably a given. But what should I do? Settle? Settle for the mediocrity that I hate about my life and deal with it. Sounds completely annihilating for my heart. I was wondering about that scripture that says something like, "and hope does not disappoint" and I decided that yes. Yes it does. It seems like that is all it does.

Then I heard a little voice in my head, "Hope in Me."

"Hope in Me"? What does that mean? I feel like I've forgotten the art of hoping in Jesus for the sake of Jesus. Maybe its not an art. Maybe its desperiation manifest through a manic activity such as hope, faith. What does it say? "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Such a simple sentence, but there is so much that I don't get out of it. So it seems like you start with hope. "Hope in Me". Then from that substance (Jesus?) it becomes faith through Jesus. So maybe its this simple. Hope through Jesus is faith. He's like the great converter, the power adaptor if you will. and Jesus does not disappoint. It may seem like he does, but I found out a while ago that the reason I was so disappointed in God was because I had put a ton of expectations on him he never agreed to. So when he didn't do what I wanted him to, I got all huffy and disappointed. But then it comes to this: hope vs. expectation? Such a tangled web I live in.

"Hope in Me"