a blessing for your best life now

My world is spinning on the axis
of a single thought:
I should be living my best life now.

Lord, other people are living their effortless, joyful, perfect lives.
Why aren’t I?

When I scroll social media,
I see grinning faces teaching me, selling me,
convincing me down to every atom
of my not sufficiently moisturized skin
that I should be more.

I could heal myself, budget myself,
shop myself whole.
I am a project ready to be completed.
I am an unfinished checklist.

But that much is true.
I am incomplete.
And you never promised us a finished life.

So pry my eyes from the
Christmas card versions
of other people’s lives.
God, give me satisfaction in the trying.
Give me joy in the never-quite-there.
Grant me peace in my unsettled heart
for my wild mediocrity.

Help me smile back at the truth
that no one,
not one, knows perfection but you.
And you already looked at this
messy creation
at the beginning of time
and pronounced it pretty darn good.