Tag: believer

Dear diary,

A couple months ago, at a local farmer's market [I attended fully expecting to come home with fresh produce and maybe a chicken or two, but apparently a "farmer's market" isn't a market where farmers sell their harvests... who'd have thought?], I met a lovely couple who were on a mission to bring skin-healthy products to the community in innovative ways. They were awesome. And so friendly. 

I left their stand with some homemade sleepytime massage oil for the baby, peppermint beard oil [I don't have a beard, but it just smelled soooo good], and a sample tin of customized powdered dry shampoo that was not yet on their website for purchase. It's tailored to blend in with your hair color and absorb excess oil from your roots/scalp while nourishing your follicles. However that works. 🤷‍♀️ Dry shampoo has always been a mystery to me, but I was excited to try it.

Except I ended up forgetting that I had it.
 
Now, rewind... or fast forward... [whichever came first or last, I can't remember]...

For Christmas, my sister Tris put together thoughtful care packages for our oldest sister Jenn, and me. It had chapstick, sentimental jewelry, necessities, all sorts of things she knew we each liked, and a new kind of charcoal toothpaste that wasn't paste at all... it was more like black tooth dust. I was intrigued. What you do is, you moisten your toothbrush, coating it with some of the dust, and then brush your teeth as usual; the end result: a whiter, brighter, healthier smile. 

No one prepared me for the 'during' result though. The dark dust turns into a ghastly liquid coating on your teeth that doesn't go away until you thoroughly brush and rinse. [I like to scare my husband sometimes and smile at him with my black-tar-looking teeth when he least expects it. It's hilarious. You should try it sometime.] 

Fast-forward to this morning. 

I saw a matte black unlabeled tin on our dresser and suddenly remembered what was in it... Oh, no! I never tried the dry shampoo powder! I didn't know if my hair really needed it, but I was determined to gather some feedback for the generous woman (Ashley? Lauren? Rachael? I can't remember her first name, unfortunately) who trusted me to supply her with an honest review and had already been waiting a long time for it.

The problem was... I didn't know how I was meant to apply it. I tried dabbing my fingertip into the mixture to see if my skin would be able to act as a transfer... nope. Then, I tried to tilt and tap some of it into my cupped hand to sprinkle over my head... but as soon as I did, an impressively large smoky cloud expanded into the air and all over my face... like you'd see in a cartoon where Wile E. Coyote waited just a little too long before throwing the stick of dynamite.

So, with hair-colored powder all over my face, I found my way to the bathroom, setting the tin down near the sink to search for a makeup powder-brush instead (I have no idea why that wasn't my initial course of action to begin with). As I reached down into the drawer, my "Look, if you don't get all of your butts out the door and into the car within the next 15 minutes (including the baby's), you'll have to duck under the live stream camera to get to your seats and potentially get called out by Pastor Trent for being late" alarm went off.
 
Shoot! I still had to brush my teeth, somehow get all of this dust off of my face, make a fresh bottle, and get the baby dressed...
 
Mom-mode kicked in. Multitasking upon multitasking. I set everything down and took care of the baby, reminding the girls not to forget their Bibles and to make sure they're dressed appropriately for the chilly weather, made a bottle with one hand while pouring cereal with another and balancing the baby on my hip while using the other one to close the pantry door. It was empowering. [In hindsight, I should've just asked my husband for help, who would have gladly lent a hand, but it's so easy to get into the misplaced mindset of "I've got this" for everything that sometimes we forget that we've got help.]

I set the baby down and rushed off to brush my teeth, turned on the faucet, ran the bristles under, and caught my reflection... UGH, powdered dry shampoo all over my face like a poorly-done spray tan... I forgot all about it! So I took my glasses off, picked up the powder brush with my other hand, and started gently coaxing the particles off my skin while dipping my toothbrush into the charcoal tin to start brushing my teeth.
 
... Except... it wasn't the charcoal toothpaste container I'd dipped my toothbrush into. It was the dry shampoo tin right beside it... simultaneously, what I was now brushing into my scalp was powdered toothpaste.

They are NOT interchangeable. 

So, we were a few minutes late to church today and my hair was a bit darker in a patch on top... and my mouth tasted like my hair was supposed to feel... but we showed up. And I didn't even mind ducking underneath the live feed camera... because we were surrounded by family and exactly where we were meant to be. No judgement, just love.

As Pastor Trent says, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." 
I don't think he means to purposely mess up or to not put forth a genuine effort... but rather, that if something is worth doing, it's worth it to take the first steps to get there... even if they're wobbly, imperfect, or nothing like you'd imagined... they're still steps in the right direction.

I'm not quite sure what the takeaway is... there were so many:

Wake up earlier and you'll have more time to get ready, ask for help instead of being pig-headed in thinking you can do it all yourself, make sure you know the accurate location of similarly-shaped containers before you take your glasses off, or even that right before church isn't a good time for experimenting with cosmetic samples... 

But whatever it may be, we'll definitely be on time next Sunday and you're invited too.

Sincerely,
a perpetual work in progress,
me.

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