Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. It always sneaks up on me. I never used to celebrate it, growing up in a nondenominational church.
I remember getting ashes for the first time in college- it felt so strange.
The last 2 years I’ve spent it at Worthy yoga studio. I took this photo afterwards to mark the date.
That place became sacred, holy ground. I always picture Jesus as a boy in the temple, his family looking for him. Of course they found him in his father’s House. That’s how I want to be, when you can’t find me. I want people to look in the temple and say something like “I knew this is where you’d be.” That’s how I felt about Worthy. It’s closed now. As tears stream down my cheek in the Nordstrom parking lot today, I grieve that I won’t be there tonight. How strange it feels to grieve locations. The Holy Spirit whispers gracefully, this is worship too, everything you do is worship. I ask Him what He means.
I think about the dressing room I just came out of. My mom got me a gift card for Christmas and I need new jeans. Jean shopping is historically an emotional and vulnerable event for me. I turn into a bit of a drama queen.
Growing up I would never consider myself to have struggled much with self image. And I’m thankful for that. But you put me in a dressing room with jeans and all these emotions come up. Critique about my shortness and my thighs, my belly. I remember one year just walking out with a pair on to show my mom with tears running down my cheeks, silent. No explanation needed. Blaming hashimotos disease. Stressing over how I want them to fit and somehow linking it to wanting to be loved by a man.
I haven’t had a full length mirror for almost 2 years and it’s disorienting. Like I don’t know my body anymore. I know it seems like an easy problem to fix. Currently I don’t have room for the one I want, so I guess I just keep holding out. They don’t seem like a necessary item. It’s an odd feeling standing in front of one. Seeing my own body with fresh eyes. There’s smiles, ways my body has changed since going off medicine. Learning to love the body God gave me in its natural form is harder than one would think sometimes. I am an image bearer of the most high king. He tells me I’m without flaw and I don’t know if I believe him as I look at a different angle. Yes, image bearer. Royal daughter.
This is how I want to live. Instead of thinking to myself “I don’t really need to be shopping right now, you were just in the area, you should have other priorities.” That time in front of the mirror, alone with God, that’s worship too, if I let it be.
Next is an appointment at 3. Another part that’s been hard to love since going off medicine is my skin. I remember in college, lathering up every day with lotion. My hallmates and best friends would always come in and joke with me to put clothes on, and I’d tell them how I was going to be married one day and it’s important to keep your skin moisturized and soft to prepare. Silly. How I wish for that discipline now. It was such a simple task and now it seems so hard to love myself in that way. I booked an organic spray tan as a last resort. I’ve only had one before- a couple years ago before my best friend’s wedding.
I want to love the skin I’m in. I want it to feel hydrated and I thought maybe this would help. And it might seem ridiculous to compare it to Aaron holding Moses’ arms up in the Bible but when you can’t love yourself sometimes you just need someone else to stand in the gap a little and that’s what the spray tan was going to be.
This is your spiritual act of worship.
I decided in the Nordstrom parking lot, looking across the street at a church that isn’t having an in-person Ash Wednesday service because of covid but instead an online service. I’m so tired of online services. I have never wanted those fingers of a stranger to Mark a cross on my forehead so bad. I want to do a sun salutation to the Lord’s Prayer in the middle of Worthy yoga gathered with others close by. Embodied worship.
That tan, letting a stranger see me naked and spray me with an aloe/walnut shell whatever-it-is mix to make me look tan would be my embodied worship today. Vulnerability. Grieving. Standing in front of a full length mirror. Celebrating. How christians love to make grieving a celebration also. A both and kind of thing. This upside kingdom we’re living in. So different than the world we reside in.
I think of Lent. And how the first Ash Wednesday 2 years ago at Worthy was when the Holy Spirit really started to set a fire in my life. Today is significant. Everything is worship. Intentionally pressing in for 40 days. Walking to the cross with Jesus. I see heavy muddy feet and chains walking step in step with him to the cross. To resurrection. Everything we base our faith on.
Lord, I’m ready. I’ll walk with you. It’s long. Patience. Impatience. Waiting. It’s translated to the word “long suffering”. But also dancing, and wrestling. Day by day. Moment by moment. The house of the Lord is those church buildings Jesus was found in. The ones that aren’t gathering in-person to celebrate today. But they are also our bodies. The ones in front of the full length mirrors. The one getting spray tans. Of course that’s where you’ll find me. In my father’s house. Embodied faith. Embodied worship. Holy, Sacred, lovely, beautiful, pure, and righteous. The way we love each other; worship. The way we love ourselves; worship. The way we choose to look at our days, spend our days; worship.