I was tired of feeling like my beauty and confidence were playing hide and go seek. It felt like a battle I couldn't win.

I started to pray to see myself through my Father's eyes. In the most desperate of moments, heightened by insecurities, I would beg as I looked in the mirror, "God, please, show me how You see me."

God honored my prayer. I walked into college with a confidence that was not my own.

But nearly a decade since then I’ve felt all the lies, the brunt of insecurities bombarding me.

It’s simple and small, these brief moments of human interaction. It reminds me of a word that I learned in high school, learning that others had subscribed a word to a feeling I had on the tip of my tongue. “Sonder - noun: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.”

Sonder fills the path by the pond more than normal these days. I wonder if the construction workers are doing okay, driving to work for their essential jobs and hoping that they don’t get sick en route.

I think there’s this pressure with all things creative that’s its perfection or nothing. Success or nothing. Career or nothing.

Dancing wasn’t something I was the best at. It wasn’t something I made into a career. It wasn’t something that I was going to innovate in and surprise the dancing world. It was just something that made me happy. It gave me purpose and peace in a way that I needed for 13 years.

Creating doesn’t have to be perfection, success, or career. We create because we are made to create. And while the purpose may not be a point A to point B connection, creating is never wasted.

About a week ago, days into our new “Stay At Home” routine, I surrendered to reality. I let myself, just for a moment, come up from under the fog of the world’s anxieties to see the sun suspended in a cloudless, smogless sky. I heard the birds, rustling leaves without the backdrop of motorcycles and horns. I haven’t heard an airplane for 3 days. If I surrender the little amount of control I’m attempting to have over this global-scale situation, I can settle into these long, warm, slow days. Life these days offers many life lessons. One being, mold each moment into all it’s meant to be. Those moments might be tiresome, they might be hungry, they might be anxious. That’s ok. Let it happen. Surrender it all because others will be sweet, full, beautiful, normal.

My heart has always craved Normal. It’s been the subject of many sentences I’ve written. I like to say I seek it in the chaoticness around me. I think I’ve believed that I have up until this point. Up until we found ourselves stuck in our home for who knows how long. Normal’s all we got to work with. You know, things like laundry, cleaning, cooking dinner, playing endless rounds of peekaboo with a one-year-old? Those kinds of normal things. It wasn’t until now that I realized my love affair with normal is purely conceptual, wishful wondering. I love the idea of normal.

Welcome to my life, not as I expected, post-graduation. It looks a lot like that scene in “Tangled” where she’s painting the walls, baking, puzzle making, making candles … unemployed. Unemployed and bored out of my mind.

I graduated in May of last year. And in the same season, I quit my job because I had an opportunity to travel and I thought we would be moving soon because of our military life. A life that I am learning day by day is unpredictable, subject to change (cue knowing laughter from those that know).

And from then to now, my life has given me a serious case of whip-lash. I lacked serious boundaries last year and overworked myself to the point that my health was in poor shape. From January until May I found myself in and out of the hospital trying to figure out why my body was so unhealthy.

My fellow discouraged friend, when we call Jesus our Lord that means He is our boss. That means He calls the shots. That means we are His workers, His servants. We don't get to backtalk. We have work to do.

Nothing changed altogether. My hurts were still there. But every day when I woke up my gut reaction changed to falling onto my knees. I was in a state of dependency, purpose, peace, and comfort from a God who never rejects us. Every day going to work - the frontline of my battle - I would be a little more joyful and a little more joyful. I walked taller. I started caring about those around me more. I started playing catch up on my neglected relationships. I just started caring. My heart was beginning to heal from the hurt my church and workplace caused me.

I still cried. But I started to be intentional about bringing truth into the dark places. I listened to worship music constantly -- at my desk, in the car, falling asleep, and sometimes immediately when I woke up. The Truth was brought to the light. People walked up wanting to know dirt, and I shared about the goodness of God.