Your shirt lands willfully on the wet tile, then one by one, your hair bands start to roll of your wrist, finally, you peel each item from your flesh in hopes that history won’t repeat itself. Your feet leave the stinging bathroom floor like molasses; the scale reads ready but your mind contradicts. Your glassy eyes are fixated on the masterpiece in the mirror; a pure work of art, pieced together by the artist of mountains, crystal seas and the brightest of stars; the creator of the universe, the same universe that would shame you in a museum. Your eyelids collapse; ultimately preparing for the news they’re about to receive. You meet your fate in the form of three digitalized numbers glaring up at you from in between your two big toes. A shock of panic is sent through the room, your hands desperately race each inch of your vulnerable body, searching for something they accidentally omitted during the first routine inspection; a reason for this catastrophe. Maybe it’s the weight of your heart that now resides in your stomach, or simply the weight that this world and society alone puts on these numbers and all numbers.
We live a life controlled by numbers; we are their puppets but there doesn’t seem to be much dancing happening on our side of things. As we sit behind the screen of our laptop, phone or tablet, yearning for those last likes on our most recent IG picture, one final text from that certain boy/girl or another Facebook comment; hoping that when we finally get to that “worthy number” in our heads, we will finally be worth something but in the end, no number will ever suffice.
Teachers hand you back test that you slaved over, studying for hours on end, till the only thing that stopped you was a much-needed bathroom break from the four espressos that were in an epic battle with your exhaustion, only to cut your legs out from underneath you, when you see the heart wrenching 63 written in red ink. Colleges tear you limb from limb; until you are nothing more than a race, test score, and a decimal point. They decide what your next four years will look like, without ever even seeing what you actually “look like.”
The pressure of this world holds you down and puts chloroform to your heart. It prys its way into your mind, a prisoner of these lies, tortured with self-inflicted interrogation. Will I ever be skinny enough, pretty enough, funny enough for someone to look at me and not just past me? If I can bench enough and maybe even get off the bench for a game or two, do you think my Dad will be proud of me? If I get out of my t-shirts, slip into a dress and put on enough makeup will my Mom finally claim me as her little girl? Will my test grade ever be high enough to become a trophy on the fridges showcase or to get me into the school of my parent’s dreams? Will enough people ever love me to finally feel loved?
What these questions seem to neglect is that they have already been answered. They were answered the very second you were brought into this world. You were enough in the beginning and you will continue to be enough till the end. So tell society to shut up, because you need to start listening to the voice that matters. The voice that calls you by name, that knows the very number of hairs on your head and longs to know your heart. He knows the number of times you’ve laughed, the number of times your shoulder has been cried on, and the amount of shoulders that are soaked with your tears. He has held your hand through countless heartbreak and mourned with you on his knees. He owns the stats of the rest of your life, written down on a spreadsheet, titled God's team. So, despite what all these other numbers might tell you, you will never fall short of being God’s number one.
