Quest

Renae Brumbaugh

Coffee Talk

 

I have an annoying habit of losing things, and it takes me a while to find them again. Maybe I’m just old. Or too distracted. Or a scatterbrain. Whatever the reason, I don’t like it. Not one bit. Fortunately, I usually can locate whatever it is by retracing my steps.

 

But there’s one thing I’ve lost, and I’ve been trying to find it for years. Perhaps you’ve seen it? This week, I’ve decided enough is enough. I’m on a quest to locate it, and nothing will stop me.

 

I’ve lost my twenty-year-old body.

 

I’m not kidding. I recently saw a picture of myself at twenty, and wow. I was built like a cheetah. Okay, a short-legged cheetah but still. My muscles had definition. My skin fit tightly. And my eyes didn’t have permanent crinkles around them.

 

Where did that girl go? The catlike body has morphed into something that looks like it was built for comfort, rather than speed. I have more skin than I used to. In fact, I have more everything than I used to.

 

So this week, in a quest to find that tightly-packed skinny girl again, I joined a gym.

 

You can stop laughing now. The thought of me in a gym isn’t that funny. Pretend to be supportive, please.

 

I mean it. Stop laughing.

 

The nice lady at the gym told me my fitness goals were well within my reach. She said that if I worked out faithfully three times a week, I’d see significant results in three or four months.

 

Then she weighed and measured me. I didn’t like her much, then.

 

Finally, she walked me through all the fat-burning, muscle building stations, and I did it! I worked out. And worked and worked until I had a very un-feminine glow about me.

 

So there you have it. In the coming weeks, I plan to eat less and exercise more, and hopefully I’ll find some faint image of that girl in the picture. But even if I don’t, I know I’ll feel better and have more energy.

 

But the more I think about that tight-skinned twenty-year-old, the more I realize I wouldn’t want to be her again. Oh, she looked good . . . but it’s a trade-off. She was smart as a whip, yet so dumb about a lot of things. I can honestly say I like the person I am today a lot better . . . I’m smarter. Wiser. More compassionate.

 

Life tends to do that.

 

And really, what’s wrong with having comfort-fit skin? I like being comfortable in my own skin. And I’m a lot more relaxed, just being me, than I was all those decades ago.

 

So, yeah. I’ll keep working out. I’ll try to take care of my body, and I’ll even use face cream to make the skin around my neck tighter. But cheetah or not, I’m pretty happy with the person God’s helped me become.

 

As for the bedazzling around my eyes, I guess it’s here to stay. And really, there’s nothing wrong with a little bling here and there.

 

“The righteous will flourish like a palm tree . . . they will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green,” Psalm 92:12-14.

 

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