Christian Living
It amazes me the things that will send you on a journey of self discovery. We are in the habit of watching VH1’s music videos in the mornings while everyone is getting ready for the day. It usually just plays in the background, with the volume low. After “JumpStart” a countdown show comes on, followed by “Tool Academy”. If you’ve never seen it, Tool Academy is a reality show about couples in dysfunctional relationships. It’s about the girls trying to “fix” these testosterone loaded “tools”. Most of them are just immature steroid junkies, but I won’t get into that. The show features a psychologist that guides them through this process. For the most part, the show is pretty much trash, and has about the same appeal as a Jerry Springer type show.
I’m not in the habit of watching it, but I didn’t bother to change the channel this morning, and I just left it running in the background while I was doing a little writing and web-browsing. At some point, however, it caught my attention. It was probably just another explosion of testosterone resulting in a fight between some of the boys on the show. At any rate, they convened for a therapy session, at which the therapist asked them to separate from the girls to go and draw a picture of how they viewed themselves using markers.
I started thinking of what I would draw if I were asked to do it. As my train of thought chugged down the senseless and scattered track that is my mind, I suddenly realized that I didn’t think I would have much in the way of something positive to draw on it.
It can be difficult and enlightening to turn the mirror on yourself. I think that even the most confident of us can be extremely critical of ourselves, at least about certain things. For me, it’s all about my personality, emotions, spirituality and confidence. I’ve never been one to follow through on things that I start. I have some pretty good ideas, but I can never seem to bring them to fruition. I have already written about my tendency to suffer with defeat. I tend to quit at the first hint of failure, and since it comes around pretty often, I just stopped before I ever left the line.
I decided that my picture would be a statue of me, instead of a vision of flesh and bone. I decided that I didn’t need a flesh and bone portrait because there wasn’t enough of the real me left to justify it. It would be a stone statue, because I had created this shell around me that had hardened to granite. It would be faceless, because faces show emotion, and I have spent years working to hide that part of me, despite being extremely sensitive naturally. One side of the statue would be muscular, well defined, and strong, but the other half would be a shapeless mass, because although I believe I have the potential for a good physique, I don’t believe in my ability to work hard enough and long enough to achieve it. Its eyes would be half closed because I think I’m exceptionally perceptive, but I don’t think I’m empathic or compassionate enough to do something about the pain I see in other people. The statue would not be standing, but crouched in a corner with it’s head buried in it’s hands because I’ve never felt like I was making progress, but rather, hiding in a corner; small and irrelevant in the world. Its hands would be clenched into fists because anger is the only emotion I’ve allowed my self to show. If I could sculpt shame on a faceless head, my statue would bury you with that impression because I’m ashamed of who I am for the very things that I created in myself.
The most important part of that picture is that it wouldn’t look the same today. You will have to forgive my grammar in this note, because I have been using the wrong tense to get my point across. The truth is that I don’t feel that way anymore. Some of the characteristics are still there, but the stone is finally being chipped away and beneath it is a real man. The man underneath will still have problems to work out, but he realizes that no one is perfect, and is slowly starting to accept those flaws and work to repair them as opposed to trying to bury them.
While I’m happy that I’m making these changes, I still wondered how I let it happen. I explored the possibilities and mulled over all of the reasons why I would let myself turn in to someone I didn’t like, and didn’t want to be.
When I was a kid I was always happy and smiling. I was energetic, I wouldn’t shut up, and I was curious about the world. Somewhere along the line I started building the shell and closing the box around who I was, because at some point, I decided that who I was wasn’t good enough. I became lethargic, uncaring, quiet and despondent. I became what I perceived as cool. While I may have passed myself off as that for a time; it was not who I was. It wasn’t even real. It was James Dean in a movie. It was just as much of an act, but without it I wasn’t good enough. I sold my self out.
If that is the answer for why I let myself become this guy that I didn’t much like, what is the answer for why I am trying to change again? There are a lot of things that I could call motivation. My wife deserves better for one. I don’t want my kids growing up with a hacked-off jerk, for another. I’ve been married for almost 12 years, and had kids for 9, so if that is the reason, I’m a little late getting started. The real reason: God can’t use the me that I created near as well as the me that HE created. I never thought I would want to be “used” by anyone, so that last sentence sort of threw me as soon as I typed it. What I’ve realized is that being used by God creates a purpose, and what’s life without purpose? But I digress.
The reason that I didn’t like the me that God had created is that I wasn’t interested in what He wanted. I decided that I was only interested in myself, and that person wasn’t getting me the results that I wanted, i.e. popularity and chicks. Of course, in the real world, James Dean isn’t very interesting, so there is that, but most importantly how can God use a broken tool? You can’t cut a tree with an axe handle. In reality, I had handicapped myself. Somewhere deep down I knew that I was a broken tool, so how could I have any self worth, if I didn’t have any God-worth. (I’m going to copyright that term, so hands off!) He always loved me, but He couldn’t use me.
Our self-image comes from Him, not just because we’re made in His image, but also because He designed us to fulfill a purpose, and if we’re not on track, and don’t have a relationship with Him, we aren’t completing that purpose and can’t possibly feel good about ourselves. Each and every part of me was designed for something. Even the smallest of my capabilities may at some point in my life be used to accomplish something for Him, but if I have morphed my self in to something other than what He designed me to be, I’m not as efficient as I should be.
I did a pretty good job of messing myself up, so I shouldn’t have any more trouble making myself right again; especially since I won’t be doing it alone this time.
So what would your portrait look like?
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