masking & unveiling

I painted my toenails tonight. Before you say "big deal" -- and you probably should -- let me frame this small victory for you.

For the past two months, my toes have sported the wasted remnants of a pedicure I had before Katy Claire was born. I had never been a pedicure kind of girl, but I experienced a couple of them last year, so now, of course, I'm hooked on this decadent little rock of nail spa crack.

I've been wanting to go back for another one. A kind soul and fellow mother soldier in our church even gave me a pedicure gift certificate (God bless her sweet heart!). But trying to keep up with the new baby and my workload and the homeschooling and the laundry and the husband and the home renovation does not a lot of time for pedicures make.

So I've been shoving my feet into closed-toe shoes and waiting for the time to come when I could get to the nail place, which seemed as likely to arrive as Santa Claus in February. I did that until tonight, that is, when the thought suddenly struck me:

I can paint my own toenails.

Why, sure I can! I've done it before, haven't I? For years and years before I paid someone else to do it for me! It won't be with the warm foot bath and the leg massage and the seven ladies speaking Vietnamese over my head, but the end result will still be painted toes, right?

As I scrubbed off the old polish (Chick Flick Cherry), I reflected on how this stupid line of thought poisons much of my life: if I can't do the whole thing, I'll do nothing. Instead of doing what I can, doing the next right thing, making the best with what I have today, I'll waste my time walking around with crappy chipped toenails, avoiding the open-toed shoes of life while I wait for the pedicure of perfection to drop in my lap.

If I could really learn this, it would change a whole lot more than my feet.