When I was in middle and high school, my older sister had
the coolest best friend. She over-flowed with a bubbly confidence. Her constant
gum-chewing gave her a nonchalance I envied. She perfected a wink that
punctuated her statements with self-assurance.
Not one to wear the latest fashion, (During the Keds craze,
my sisters and I drew blue rectangles on the back of our Walmart sneakers to
give the near-sighted passerby the impression we were wearing the real thing.
It was a temporary fix, unfortunately, because we used dry erase markers.) I
was always thrilled when I got her hand-me-downs. She knew how to dress and fix
her hair. She was a cheerleader and she had a boyfriend whose letter jacket she
often wore. There was something so effortless about her sophistication.
As a chronic over-thinker, I felt like an awkward goofball
in her presence. I studied her winking and tried to incorporate it into my
conversations but it didn’t work. Instead, people asked me if I had something
in my eye. I couldn’t keep up with the fashion trends, even if I knew what they
were. I didn’t have a boyfriend and I wasn’t a cheerleader. I came to realize I
would never achieve the level of coolness I saw in my sister’s friend.
Now that I am old(er), I see cool in a different way. When
friends arrange a birthday lunch for me or a prayer session for our pending
adoption, I see cool. When my husband works hard all day then comes home to
play soccer outside with our son even though he’s exhausted, I see cool. When
teachers use their free time to work with struggling kids and their own money
to buy these kids books at the Book Fair, I see cool.
The lack of effort used to impress me. That’s the false claim of youth:
Don’t act like you care. Now I’m impressed when I see someone exert an effort
they didn’t know they had to do the things that need to be done without expecting
anything in return. Giving that last bit of energy or brainpower or spending money
is what amazes me now. It would be so easy just to let someone else make the
effort. What if we all stopped coloring
the back of our sneakers and got busy being the real thing—the hands and feet
of Jesus?
