WE ARE WHO WE ARE

A couple of days before Halloween Noah Butler was wandering around the halls while mom Lisa was doing her thing on one of the computers getting the Ministry Opportunity (Time and Talent) sheets ready for the Every member Canvas mailing. [If you have not filled yours in and returned them….] Noah was dressed as a bumblebee: black and yellow outfit with big wings on his back.

   He soon found his way into my office and the candy basket on the coffee table. He also found Albert. He and Albert get along famously, but then who doesn’t with Albert? Anyway, Albert had never seen Noah dressed like that and he started to growl. Lisa and I were not sure if he was growling because Noah did not offer him any of his – Albert’s – candy or because Albert was afraid of the outfit. Albert, of course, did not give any explanation for his growling. He did get some candy from Noah and that seemed to pacify him a little.

   But Albert did the same thing on Halloween. He loves little kids, but then, he loves everyone. Every time the doorbell rang, he was right there trying to get his nose out the door. When he did, again he growled. Was he upset because I was giving away his candy? Was he upset because he wanted some of the candy the little ones had in their bags? Why was he growling when he almost never does?

   Well, once again, he did not explain his actions. But I think I have figured it out. It was the costumes that did him in. He knows Noah the Three-Year-Old. He does not know Noah the Bumblebee. He knows children as children, not as Spidermen or Cinderella or SpongeBob BoxPants or some witch or ghost or whatever. Albert knows us as we are, who we are. He does not know us when we pretend to be someone else.

   Albert loves us when we are who we are, no matter who we are: young, old, or somewhere in between. When we pretend to be someone we are not, he growls. He won’t bite us, cause us any pain, anything like that. He simply growls. That growl seems to say, “I am who I am. You are who you are. That’s all that matters. Now how about a piece of candy or a belly rub? Both would be better.”

   Too often too many of us spend too much time pretending to be someone we are not in the hope that others will like us better, in the desire to be accepted. Sometimes we even try to deny who we are by putting on false fronts. For Albert all that is unacceptable and unnecessary. It is the same with God. It should be the same with us. We are who we are. Trying to be someone we are not neither solves nor resolves anything.

   It would be wonderful if every time we attempted to be someone we are not, Albert was around to growl at us and remind us to knock it off. If we cannot be comfortable in our own clothes, our own skin, we will never be comfortable dressed as someone we are not. Maybe that’s why Adam and Eve were naked, why we come out of the womb naked. Albert’s growl is a reminder that make-up of any kind only covers up the real us. It does not make us into some one else.                                         W.J.P