Chapter 1: Vanity continued...

A continuation from yesterday's post. After this, no more freebies ;).

Downhill From Here

A few weeks ago I had an appointment with a new dermatologist regarding a mole. Since I was already there, I thought I’d ask if something could be done to tame the wrinkles around my eyes. But when I stepped into the lobby, I knew I was in trouble. Turned out the dermatologist’s office doubled as a spa, which in LA is code for all things cosmetic—from chemical peels to lip injections. I had a hunch a really good moisturizer wouldn’t be the doctor’s only recommendation.
 
And it wasn’t. She told me I did have a lot of wrinkles, especially for someone so young, but not to worry—with a little Botox she could make me look eighteen again. Um, looking like a teenager hadn’t been my initial goal. But somewhere between having my “before” pictures snapped without warning under the fluorescent lights and hearing what my face will look like in ten years without “intervention,” eighteen started to sound pretty good.
 
Truth is, we don’t have the money for Botox. Dallas and I have three kids under ten, which means cosmetic intervention doesn't exactly make the short list of things we can afford. And that’s a good thing, because it’s not just my face that’s beginning to fail me. Since I had kids, the whole system seems to be breaking down. Varicose veins have shown up on my thighs, and my armpits sweat for no good reason—sometimes one without the other. I have stretch marks, some explained by pregnancy and others not, and yesterday I realized I’d buttoned some skin into my jeans and it didn’t even hurt. Oh—and when I laugh too hard, a little pee comes out.

Yeah, if money weren’t an issue, I imagine a lot of procedures would be tempting, which is why we see it time and again in the lives of the rich and famous—first a lift, then a tuck, then an injection of some sort. Watching it play out in Hollywood is enough to prove the whole pursuit is futile or, at best, unending. There are websites devoted to outing celebrities for their surgeries. My favorite sites post the before and after pictures, which have to be updated every time they go under the knife, be it to fix what they had done and don’t like or to tweak what they liked but now droops or to tackle a newly aging feature.
And yet we wonder what it would be like to fix that one thing.
 
Ha.
 
And it’s not just cosmetic surgery—it’s all the things we do to get pretty and stay pretty. After my third child was born, I was ready to buckle down and get back in shape. For a year and a half I exercised almost every day, watched my diet, and got more rest. I looked really great, too. The baby weight came off, and my friends praised me for being so disciplined. But eventually I got tired of the strict routine. I decided to take a short break, which turned into the past year and a half of infrequent exercise and a lot more sugar.

That's the problem. I don’t just feel the pressure to look better, because even when I reach my goal, I have to somehow stay there. I have to maintain. And since maintaining in my thirties is a lot harder than it was in my twenties, it’s clear each decade will bring a host of new problems. The pressure never lets up, and once again the race I find myself running is a no-win. I fixate on a flaw, compare myself to someone else, work hard to change, fail to reach my goal, fixate, compare, work hard, reach my goal, fail to maintain.
 
Sigh.
 
I’m a mouse on a wheel.
 
And in my exhaustion, I turn to God. Perhaps He should have been my starting place, but alas . . . I often think of Him as a last resort instead of my first line of defense.