Lies I Believe 1

So I made this post Lies I Believe (part) 1, because honestly, I think know there are a LOT more than just one to two lies I believe. I know they are lies. But do I? Because I believe them. And if I do know that they are lies, but believe them anyways, what does that say about me?

It probably says that I need a whole lot of grace.

Or mental help, but you know, hey, I'm good with that.

I've been playing around with this idea for a little while about writing about LIB (because if I really type out "Lies I Believe" 4,200 times I will get seriously seriously tired of typing). Why? Because I think know I'm not the only one who believes something about myself, or the world around me that simply isn't true. And like I said in my last post, this blog started out as being very much about me and for me, but then suddenly morphed into something I never saw coming, and that was something about me, but for you.

My soul is railing against that last sentence. Like everything inside of me just welled up and called myself a pretentious jerk. How arrogant am I to think that I have something to put out there that could help? I'm no hero. I don't have a single thing figured out. Who am I to talk? Just sit back, and shut up. (Internal Kelly needs a Snickers or SOMEthing. Daaaang internal Kelly!)

But maybe that's one of the first lies I believe. I don't matter.

And here's the truth of it. I don't. This is not some sort of self-deprecating sentence that is suddenly going to have everyone going, "wait, I liked the Rocky analogies better!"...we're getting there. But first, let's be real. I am one single human being in a world populated with billions and billions of human beings. I am a part of one generation on a planet that has housed more generations than I know how to compute, and has Lord knows how many generations to follow. In the grand scheme of things, I truly am insignificant.

If that doesn't do it for you, then let's expand even further. I am in one spot on one couch in Lewisville, TX, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, Known Universe, Unknown Universe. I'm also pretty positive I just stole that from something...like a play...or something. I'm not sure, but I'm positive if I hit publish on this post my Literary or Theatre minded friends will jump all over me with references from Our Town, or...wait...is it Our Town? Since I'm botching the quote completely, I don't know how to look that one up.

Gotta love that I totally just interrupted myself.

So here's the deal. When I went out to the beaches of Mexico last fall, I saw miles and miles of sandy perfection. I mean, waves upon waves crashing so majestically against layers and layers of white sand. Sometimes pushing it further inland, and sometimes sucking it back out into the water. It was spectacular. And nobody on planet earth can tell you how much sand is there. Oh, they can guestimate how many cubic tons, or whatnot there might be. But no one can say, why Kelly, there are "72.687 gajillion grains of sand on the pacific coast of Mexico alone". To which I would just smile and say, "yeah, but I was on the Caribbean side". And that's just one country! One little spot compared to the entire coastline of oh say, Australia, or Asia. Any rational human being would say "a grain of sand is insignificant".

That is, until a grain of sand gets in your shoe (or worse, your swimsuit) and starts to rub against tender flesh. Now what was insignificant becomes extraordinarily significant, what did not matter, becomes preeminent,  and no amount of outdoor showering is getting rid of the burn it left behind.

It mattered. Not because it was one of gajillions of grains of sand, but because it connected. Not with the 8 billion people on planet earth during this generation alone, but because it somehow wound up in my flip flop, between my leather strap and the top of my foot.

Could any grain of sand fill that spot, and do just as well at scraping up my sissy foot? Sure it could have. My callouses are on the bottom of my feet, not the top. But it wasn't just any grain of sand. It was that grain, or those handful of grains.

Insignificance obtained significance. At least to me.

So. Do I matter? In the grand scheme of things? No. I don't even register as a blip on the radar of existence. It's why we are in awe when we stare at mountains and oceans and star filled skies. We feel small. And we should remember that we are small.

But do I matter? Oh yes. Yes I do. I matter to so many friends, so many family members that I bounce up against, and sometimes even rub the wrong way. To my dogs I am the bringer of food, and affection (probably prioritized in that order). To my family I am the eternal little sister (no, really, I swear I'm actually an adult guys!), daughter, granddaughter, cousin, niece, aunt. To my friends, I am goofy, or serious, kind, or kind of a pain. But to everyone, I am Kelly, regardless of my relationship status with you. Just Kelly. Intrinsic and Extrinsic value. Value because of who I am, and to whom I belong. And I'm ok with that.

And Kelly struggles with lies she believes, like that she doesn't matter. Like, she shouldn't write, because who would care? But there's some sand in Mexico that proved otherwise, and a little scar on the top of my right foot that says, "even the littlest guy matters".

The smallest effort. The one last minute, last rep, last bite of food. It all matters. Because it matters to me. I wonder what life would look like if we all believed that what we did, or even more personally, who we are, actually mattered. Not in some moralistic behaviorism sort of way, but in the real deal day to day.

I'm pretty positive that's what every Dove commercial on youtube is about. And I think that's why they all make us cry.

You matter. I matter. Don't believe the lie.