why the ugly duckling

I am very comfortable with this identity. As a child I felt fat and ugly, and was treated as such, and felt that I never fit in. At school our 8th grade did a play called Ugly Duckling about an ugly princess whom no one wants to marry because she is so stinkin ugly. Guess which part I played? Yep, the ugly princess. I remember feeling somewhat happy about the perfect "fit" of the part for me.

There have been times when I have dreamed of becoming the swan, of becoming confident in who God made me to be. Times when I have begun to live that out, a little. But overwhelmingly there is this dark shadow in my life, and in this shadow I always look like the ugly duckling.

I love to write. So here I plan to write about the journey. Will I ever be the swan? I don't know. Some people say God promises that. I have trusted a lot of promises in my life and been betrayed and disappointed. So I'm not too much into trusting cotton candy promises right now, that melt into nothing under the first shower of reality that hits them.

There is a certain strange anonymity on the internet. I could be alone here forever. Or someone could read this and comment, and I would know I'm not alone. I don't know that I really expect anyone to read this, but I suppose someone might stumble across it. Why put it on the web instead of in a journal? I guess I think that maybe, perhaps, someone might identify with what I'm going thru and be encouraged in their own journey. Or not. This is mostly for me.

I'm at a really low time in my more than four decades of living. What keeps me going these days is my kids. They deserve way better than me, but I'm the only Mom they've got, so I have to keep going for their sake.