Me and my golden calf.

Sometimes, the prettiest people have the ugliest hearts.

There’s a somebody I used to know who was my golden calf. I hated having an idol, but I needed an idol. Something to admire with my eyes and say, “This is what you don’t measure up to.” And then I’d dig my fingernails into the dirt, crawling and climbing to some version of myself that I thought would measure up.

There is no such version.

This person was pretty, and now? She’s beautiful. She lives in a faraway land, and I imagine her net worth is an unending swimming pool filled with a hundred dollar bills that would give Scrooge McDuck a mild panic attack.

This person is all about this person—so much so, they don’t even need me to worship them anymore.

I’m thirty-six. I’m too old for idols. No, that’s not correct. I’m too learned for idols, perhaps. I know the Lord. He calls and turns my face away, and the gold is no longer gold but a slight pile of ash.

My heart aches for this woman.

Can you imagine crawling and digging your way until you finally make it? And you cover the truth of yourself in make up and hair and clothes so nobody can see the way your skin cracks at night, giving way to the ugly inside you? You become what they need you to become, and you believe the lie because the only other option is to crawl back down and come to terms with what you never could before.

Oz behind the curtain.

I think the sweetest thing God ever did for me was to release my claws and set me down on solid earth again. It’s where I can stand and see the birds in the beautiful bright sky.

And the only golden thing about this place is the sun, and the way it warms my face.