Soul Ugly

I saw my ugly this morning.

Not my physical ugliness,

The deep,

Messy,

Soul ugliness that we all try to hide,

But it always manages to rear it's ugly head when we least expect it. 

And my own personal brand of ugly decided to make an appearance at the place where my brain goes to take a rest.

It showed up in the middle of the gym.

And I think that's the way our ugly likes to make it's appearance. 

In a place where we feel comfortable enough to let out our brains take a rest.

The place where we don't notice the ugly quite as easily.

My soul ugly first showed up in spits of anger,

Hateful and thrown at someone who had no idea they were entering into my ugly's path,

And then in morphed into sadness,

Shame,

A girl standing in the middle of the gym floor crying,

Silent tears that could have easily been mistaken for drops of sweat. 

My ugliness,

My soul ugly,

Made it's grand appearance because of one thing-

Failure.

And my disdain for even the smallest shred of evidence to point to the fact that I am capable of failure.

There's this fear wrapped up in failure.

This fear and this comparison.

She can do that, why can't I?

What will people think of me if I can't get this right?

What will that say about me?

And this fear is like fuel to my ugly's fire.

It's favorite kind of food.

My ugly's barbeque chicken pizza.

And when given even a taste,

Causes my ugly to go into a tailspin,

Resulting in silent tears on the floor of the gym. 

And as I sit and think about my ugly,

And why I continue to feed it what it wants, and what it needs,

I have to wonder,

Why am I so afraid of something that everyone does?

Why am I so afraid of something that binds us all together,

The fact that at some point,

We will all stumble,

We will all make mistakes,

We will all fail.

Failure is inevitable,

But failure doesn't have to be scary. 

Failure is not weakness,

It's the inability to see the humanness of failure that makes us weak,

And our ability to admit that we have  stumbled,

And made mistakes,

And fail,

And will continue to fail,

That makes us strong. 

The fear of failure,

Not the actual failure,

Holds us captive,

And makes us ugly,

Prisoners to our own inner critics,

Our own brand of soul ugly.

But somehow,

In the admitting that you are weak,

It makes you a little bit stronger.

Failure is inevitable.

But the fear of failure is a choice.

And the choice to choose fear,

Is a choice to remain a prisoner,

And a choice to continue to feed the ugly. 

So today, I make a choice.

Today I choose to show myself grace,

Today I choose to accept that failure is inevitable,

But that doesn't make me weak,

Or less then.

It makes me human.

Today I choose not to feed the soul ugly. 

And today I choose not to be a prisoner to my fear of failure.

Today, I'm choosing freedom.

"The Lord sets prisoners free" Psalms 147:7