I'm a Wreck, Therefore, I Buy

I came across this yesterday, and a resonating, "Yes!" flew from between my lips.

"So maybe it's just possible that when people make purchases sometime, there's a bit of insecurity involved rather than confidence."

It was written in response to all the "consumer confidence" hoopla frightening people into buying crap they just don't need lest they must needs be considered guilty of single-handedly destroying our collective hopes for a more richly self-satisfying American, if not global, economy.

Sadly, if I am honest with me and then you--which I really, really want to be--there is always something on my secret unwritten list that I think will make me that much more fabulous if I could just get my poorly manicured fingers on it.  I say this is sad because I should know better.  No very long ago I had to stuff all everything I owned, save a suitcase or two, into a storage unit and learn to live on the charity of family, friends, and utter strangers.  It was especially painful for me, the mother of four young children, to lose everything I thought made life worth living, outside of the tender hearts I held in the palm of my hand, knowing that, if the landscape before me threatened to be preserved and immovable, I would never have the means by which to recapture that life and those things again.

Not that we were rich.  Not at all.  But they were my things.

Through the many months that followed...and followed...and followed, I learned to live a life without those things, a life even without those dreams of things.  I wore short pants in the middle of winter, to the chagrin of my dearest friend.  I wore a single pair of shoes that eventually needed to be, after removing them, left out-of-doors because they got too funky.  I put my long, unruly, and distressed hair into a clip each and every day because I couldn't afford to have it cut.  These things seem so trivial, but when your and your children's stomachs are being filled by the grace of God, when your heads rest together at night upon pillows of mercy, and you hold your breath so that your very butts don't find their way onto the streets, common feminine comforts--nay, luxuries--are not trivial at all.

But, after a while, it stopped hurting so very much and actually started feeling right.

So what happened?

Well, slowly, it got better.  My wallet got fatter, and I, one day unknown, again made a list:

1. Clothes

2. Shoes

3. Hair

4. Makeup

I just wanted to feel like a woman again, not an animal surviving on instinct.  But, what struck me yesterday when I read that blog post was that, although those days are past--not far past, but past enough--I still have that same list: clothes, shoes, hair, and makeup.  And each time I start to feel out-of-control, insecure, or the havoc of meeting the eyes of scrutinizing strangers, I pull out this list and hold onto it tightly, as if adorning the outside of my self will make it all so very better.  I know, I know: man looks at the outside of man, but God looks upon the heart.  I just wish my heart wasn't such a wreck.