jakorte's blog

“You hold yourself together like a pair of bookends
But, who are you when I'm not looking
Do you break things when you get mad
Eat a box of chocolate ‘cause you're feeling bad
Who are you when I'm not around
When the door is locked and the shades are down?”

Preface: I re-fell in love with a song recently. A 2010 second incarnation of a 2007 release that reminded me of a greater love, and the greatest love of all. Yes, that’s a bit abstract, but no, it wasn’t that far of a leap for me.

Mostly, we all like to think we are who we are – always.
Even though we actually know better.
We know what goes through our minds – our doubts, our regrets, and how hard it is to keep that façade.

So now, I’m wondering who we’re really keeping it from and why? I have some fairly legitimate self-answers. No one likes a downer. A hidden weakness can’t be held against you. Anger makes you ugly, and the after affects of crying don’t look good on anyone.

Still, we like to think, in fact we insist, we share our whole real selves with some; an equally careful few whose souls may have evolved like ours. But even those relationships come with expected limitations of holding back when hurtful or afraid to hurt.

The thing is, eventually, everything leaks without consistent, repetitive repair. If you spend enough time around anyone, they’ll come to see the subtle signs. They’ll call you on a distant look or heavy shoulders, and you can’t really say that you’re fine. So, you say, “Oh, I’m just thinking….” and it’s not a half-truth, at all because by now you’re thinking… “How did they know?” That’s always followed up by a split second cost analysis of the price of divulgence versus the price of alone. We hope our cultivated mirror image, which we’ve spent hours, days, lives practicing is a luminary. But even luminaries cast shadows.

So, who do we willingly show our hidden side to, and who always sees it anyway?

GOD doesn’t need to ask us, “Who are you when I’m not looking?” But we certainly need to cultivate our presented personas to a point where they must, and do, merge with our private selves. It’s unreasonable to project infallibility when every moment is a failure. Failures in disclosure, failures in encompassment, failures in alone; we fail until we believe.

Only then do we recognize the difference between the glass refraction – our reflection of ourselves – and the luminary that allows us to see deeper. Only then do we come to and begin to know how GOD so closely follows who we are when no one is looking, answering well-hidden un-sent prayers we didn't even know we had prayed.

In this issue: Edith Wharton, Luminaries, Lighting a Path, Autism Hope of Lenawee @ Clinton Fall Festival

Now posted: Faith, Current, Build-a-Prayer 2