Mama look! It’s a clown! My nephew pointed and bounced on his mama’s lap. She clamped her hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh.

The house had been on the market for too many months, and this was the first showing in a while. 

The real estate agent rolled her eyes and quickly guided her client toward the backyard. Oh, you must see this beautiful view!

To Zack’s credit, the lady did have on heavily applied red lipstick, sparkly turquoise eye shadow, and a multi-colored neon top. 

Kids are brutally honest unless they have something from the floor in their mouth, or they are dying of thirst after bedtime. 

A few years ago, I took my dog Livvy to Canine Confidence Class. I signed her up because we couldn’t go on walks without passing a sweet but very enthusiastic dog at the end of our street. Livvy was terrified of her.

Livvy is a large dog, part lab and pit, with a ferocious bark. The few times I managed to get her to walk, other walkers would cross the street, turn slightly sideways in Not Going to Fight, but Am Going to Flight mode, and turn their head in my direction to ask loudly, “Will she BITE?”.  Yeah, a sandwich or a chicken finger, but not YOUR finger. 

In the first few moments of Confidence Class, Livvy saw the other dogs, lay back her ears, tucked her tail, and crawled flat on her belly toward the exit as if she were doing Army drills under barbed wire. After three repeat performances in later classes, the instructor pulled me aside and said Livvy wasn’t going to make it. 

“She’s going to be a homebody. Just take her home and love on her.”

And that’s ok.

One of Mama’s favorite TV shows was ‘Keeping Up Appearances.’ It was a British sitcom, and the main character was constantly trying to… keep up appearances. Her last name was Bucket, but she insisted it was pronounced Bouquet. All her efforts to be seen as high society, worthy, and cultured ended in some disastrous embarrassment. 

We have all been there. Sunday night is when it shows up. It’s late; you should be asleep, and there are still wet clothes in the washing machine. The bed was never made today. 

I ate too much, and I didn’t finish the project I needed to complete. The trash needed to be taken out yesterday.

I brush my teeth, and there is nowhere to look except at the mirror. 

What did I accomplish the week before? What did I need to prepare for the upcoming week? Usually, the answer was not enough and too much, and I didn’t do any of it.

Sunday night is when I tell myself I’ll start tomorrow, and I’ll make a to-do list. I’ll eat healthier. I’ll work out more. I’ll get up earlier. I’ll finish that project tomorrow.

The last line in the movie Gone with the Wind was, “Tomorrow is another day.” This should be the Sunday Night motto.

No wonder everyone hates Mondays.

I have a small makeup mirror attached to our master bathroom wall that is illuminated with 10X magnification. I like it because I can now find the stray chin hairs and mascara smudges that I could no longer see with my 63-year-old eyes. 

Mark, like most males, had not even noticed the mirror was there, despite it being one of his “Honey Do” items he had completed a few months ago.

He looked puzzled. 

“Why do you need to see yourself this close!! I can see my pores in this thing! Nobody looks at your PORES!”

Well, maybe close talkers do. But he made a point. Stretch out your arms, and that’s where most people see you from. 

This sweet man, my husband of just under three years, has seen me go through three tooth implants (with months of missing teeth) and gain 10 pounds from heavy antibiotics (now mostly lost, thankfully). And he has never used a 10X magnifying mirror to point out my flaws.

I’ve spent too much of my 63 years fixating on some physical flaw. I skipped pool parties because my thighs were too big, or I felt bloated. I often wore sunglasses because a random guy in Daytona Beach once told me I had small eyes. I have always struggled with losing 5 to 10 pounds. 

I’m human. Imagine that. The weird part is, I don’t let myself be human.

I had a coworker who religiously stepped on the scale every morning and would call in sick if she had gained even one pound. She spent the day exercising.

Another only ate three granola bars a day and two cups of black coffee. 

Both were convinced, as I was, that our worth was what the scale or mirror said. 

Most people experience Imposter Syndrome, where Sunday Night Sadness hits and we feel…less than. One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that most folks, probably 99%, aren’t really thinking about you or your flaws, whether real or imagined. And for those who seem to, like the Plastics in the movie Mean Girls, they are deflecting their own insecurities.

We sometimes make ourselves small to avoid facing our true selves. I told an acquaintance of mine, a very dignified man who is well respected in society, that getting older surprised me because I realized no one truly knows what they are doing. We’re all just winging it. 

He gave a slight smile and looked away. I never knew him well, but in that moment, I understood him.

He was just as scared as everyone else.

When I think about my thoughts during that day, a whole lot of the time, it is “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I be…more like…anyone else?”

I waste so much time majoring in the minors. Worry about doing more, being more, looking more like everybody else. 

A friend of mine used to look forward to watching her favorite movie every Saturday morning. She would make breakfast, pour a cup of coffee, and watch Dirty Dancing. Every. Single. Saturday. Jennifer Grey played the female lead role and was partnered with Patrick Swayze.

For any woman over 50, go ahead and sigh. I just did. And for those under 50, have a Girls’ Night In and watch it. Trust me.

Jennifer Grey, despite her talent and popularity after this movie, chose to get a nose job. She didn’t want to be typecast, but the result was that she looked like any other attractive actress. She was beautiful, but didn’t look like herself anymore.

When my mama was alive, on Mother’s Day, I would post my usual Facebook message about mothers, gratitude, and maybe a joke or two. I added her picture from when she was in her early 20s and won Miss Warner Robins Air Force Base. She was beautiful, no doubt.

But she hated that picture.

“I wish you wouldn’t post that picture! I don’t look like that anymore. I’m old and ugly.”

She was wrong. 

I didn’t know her then, obviously, but I recognized her smile, her eyes, the shape of her face. The first face I saw when I was born. She was beautiful.

The day she died, she was in hospice at home and weighed less than 50 pounds due to dementia and aging. But she was so beautiful. So beautiful. Even more beautiful than that hopeful beauty queen so many years before. 

For the first time, I saw her as a person, not my mama. All those years, all those thoughts she had. All the love, hate, disappointments, and happiness. Joy. Wrinkles, age spots. All contained in an 87-year-old face that society wouldn’t think much of. She was more beautiful every day, every minute. A precious kind of beauty that only happens when time is short. So short.

The most beautiful face is one who has lived well.

What makes us most interesting is exactly how God made us. Look at the sunset. He makes a different, one-of-a-kind masterpiece every day. And he made you, too. 

And He don’t make junk. He makes masterpieces. 

Author Max Lucado wrote, “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning… Face it, friend. He is crazy about you!”

When you look in that 10X mirror, imagine your picture on His refrigerator. When you wake up in the middle of the night, remember this: 

Zephaniah 3:17

“The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

The God of the Universe SINGS over you!

He didn’t forget me, and He did NOT forget you either.