It was picture day at school! Little boys with normally disheveled hair had it neatly slicked down. Little girls with unruly, fly-away hair suddenly had ponytails and braids that took the better part of their early morning at home to bribe into completion. They all arrived at school looking wonderfully…uncomfortable.
As each child took a turn in front of the camera, he stiffly held a wooden airplane he had never seen before, she fiddled with the folds or puffs on her fancy dress. The photographer called out, “Hold still now and smile! Look like a superhero! Look like a princess!” Then a very odd transformation took place. What used to be little faces of pure joy and innocent giggles became intense masks of bared teeth, glassy eyed stares, and the vacant looks of marionettes that had been abandoned by the puppeteer. The kids were implored to relax and be themselves, but they seemed to have no idea of who they really were. Their familiar little world was now on display; they had been invaded.
About an hour later, they were all playing outside, laughing, screaming, and racing around the mulch covered playground. Braids and ponytails were swinging around in delightful tangles, curly hair was fluffing out of tight elastic bands, pant legs were getting muddy, and the pink fluffy dresses were no longer pink nor fluffy. But the smiles were bigger and the laughs were loud. Even their eyes were laughing!
In front of the camera, these kids were imitating what they have seen all of us do when we know others are watching. We try to be “better”, whatever that is. We fake a smile, we change our appearance, and we hope a new and improved version of ourselves will be remembered for posterity. I do it all the time. When someone takes a picture of me, I call out, “I get editing rights!” I certainly don’t want whatever the camera catches to be out there for all the world to see! It’s got to be a “good” picture. I guess I want it to look like what I wish it would look like.
What I really wish is that we could see ourselves the way others see us. I’m all for personal growth, but so many of us are into redecorating who we are just to get the approval of the general public, most of whom we don’t even know.
What if we prioritized our lives the way a child does? The top of the list would have us feeling the wind blow through our hair as we swing as high as we can on the swing set, even though it’s picture day. We would blow bubbles through a straw in our chocolate milk, even though it splatters on our white lace dress. We would tear through the yard in our good pants playing shark, or taunting each other with cicadas as we get grass stains on our best clothes.
The picture our parents keep in their hearts and the memories they love to recall are not the stiffly posed photographs with a forced smile. They’re the pictures in their minds of the chocolate on the white dress, chewing gum stuck in the hair, grass stains on the knees of the Sunday suit, and the endless giggles and brilliant smiles – that’s what everyone wants to remember, and so they do.
God knows the real us, Hs children. He doesn’t want us to force the fake smiles, and He is well aware when we’re trying to be something we’re not. Psalm 44:21b says that God knows the secrets of the heart. He loves the real us, not the slicked hair and perfect, clean persona with perfectly ironed clothes. He wants us to enjoy the wind in our faces and to laugh with each other as we tumble around His beautiful creation. He knows the very real “us” more than we realize, and He wants us to discover the real Him. Camera faces mean nothing. Personal backgrounds, how we were raised, myths, misconceptions, wishful thinking – none of that is who we are or who He is. Our families and friends don’t love us because of the way we pose for a picture. Our friends may not even have any photos of us, but I’m sure there are plenty of memory pictures. There is a time to flash a beautiful smile and a choreographed pose that reflects our personality, but that’s not the extent of who we are. That’s just a face that changes year to year (gulp!), but it’s not who we are. Heart pictures last forever.
Time for a family portrait. Our Father is in the middle with all of us kids gathered ‘round – bunny ears behind someone’s head, someone else sticking out their tongue, someone else is pulling the pigtails of someone else who is grimacing in anger, someone else is blinking. We are all vulnerable. There’s crying, anger, joy, disappointment, elation, success, failure; we’re all here. The real gang’s all here.
Dance on
Grace Notes 