Will The REAL Person Please Stand Up?

It is strange where our motivation of what to write about comes from. Being so new to blogging (mine is less than one month old) I have a lot of things and ideas rolling around in my thoughts.

This morning I was reading one of my small bookmarked list of people, Ginger, and her blog on Is That Really You? It really touched me and I thought immediately that I wanted to write about that so here I am. After all my heading reads "A lie is ANYTHING contrary to the naked truth". The devil is the father of lies "When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it". John 8:44b KJV "He couldn't stand the truth because there wasn't a shred of truth in him. When the Liar speaks, he makes it up out of his lying nature and fills the world with lies." John 8:44b The Message

Years ago, most of you probably are too young to remember, they had a TV show called What's My Line. They had a panel of, I think it was, 4 celebrities. Each week they would have a person on with a funny or unusual occupation and then 2 others who were impostors. Each of the 3 participants sat together behind a table and would be asked questions by the panel of celebrities. The celebrities were trying to pin-point and figure out who was REALLY the person. At the climax of the show they would say "Will the REAL person please stand up?" That's what we're talking about...the REAL you coming forward.

I doubt that there has ever been a person, other than our Lord Jesus Christ, who has not dealt with this issue. I wonder, " is it harder to be "real" today than at other times in history?". I do feel that our society today starts out at a very early age trying to put us in the acceptable mold. Comments and statements like "Don't act like that.", "You shouldn't feel like that.", "Don't say that.", etc. Shouldn't we be asking questions like "Why are you acting like that?", "What is making you feel like that?", "Why are you saying that?". I know myself I was told a LOT, not only by my parents, but later by my husband, that "you shouldn't feel like that". It bothered me a lot. It bothered me because it made me feel like something was wrong with me. That I didn't measure up. I did feel "like that" and why was I being told I shouldn't?

My "break through" came at the age of 44. My mother was ill and getting to the point where she was unable to live alone. My husband was converting our double car garage into a very lovely living area, small kitchenette, bedroom, walk-in closet and bath for her. It had its own private entrance from outside and was also separated from our main living area by a mudroom. It made a very nice arrangement where she could live with us. We were in the process of disposing of her extra furnishings, private effects, etc. and I was having a huge garage sale at her home before it was put up for sale. I was under extraordinary stress. Anyone who has had to dispose of their parents items at a time like this, or at the time of death, knows what I mean. My husband and I were driving toward my mothers house and I was holding a set of metal canisters in my hands. I don't even remember what I said but my husband said to me (for the upteenth time) "You shouldn't feel like that." Something exploded in me (I'd mostly been a pretty controlled person) and I suddenly found myself screaming "DON'T ever say that to me AGAIN" as I began to beat the canister set against the dashboard, smashing it and causing my hand to bled. It wasn't a pretty way or sight, and I wish I'd had the courage to have done it much earlier in not so violent a manner, but let me tell you.........it set me free!! I finally was able to express what had been bothering me for years. It so shocked my husband that I don't think he has ever said that to me again. If he has, it hasn't really mattered because I've been able to tell him not to tell me what I should or should not feel. We are ALL entitled to our feelings. Right or wrong, they are our feelings.

Do you know what coming clean and getting honest does? Well, those around you, especially those closest to you who have loved you the way you "were", suddenly don't really care for the changes they are seeing. After all it rocks the boat. The tranquil waters are suddenly getting sloppy and splashing out on them and they are getting wet. Sometimes they are getting drenched! After 24 years of a very tranquil, and I felt, happy marriage we were on stormy waters for a period of 6 or 7 years. For those of you who don't know, we have now been married 48 years and after weathering the storm we do now have a very tranquil, happy, completely honest marriage. Any of you struggling with the "storms" I am living testimony to ride out the storm and let the anchor hold (a dear friend of mine just sang that song in her church a couple of weeks ago. Boy, I didn't know I was going to be writing about my anchor holding!) Especially in the beginning there were so many times I wanted to just give up and leave. Everything "fleshly" in me was screaming for me to do just that..........BUT I clung to not what I felt but what God's word said and what I knew to be right in my heart and spirit.

I would like to tell you I am now completely honest and real with everything and everyone. That would be an enormous lie. I am not. I still have area's where I hold my tongue. I still have areas where it is difficult for me to be totally honest. BUT, and it is a big but, I am working on it and more importantly Christ is working in me, and "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you (ME) will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ". Philippians 1:6 KJV "There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you (ME) would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears." Philippians 1:6 The Message This is truly my Life Verse.

What I like best about this new, to me, blogging world is the freedom it gives us to work on becoming the real person Christ had in mind when "we were yet in our mothers womb". I am so thankful it is His work. We just have to be willing to put ourselves on The Potter's Wheel and sometimes we just have to start with being willing to be willing. I agree with Ginger's statement "God has brought us together in quite an unusual way". In my case he is bringing us together. I am so thankful and extremely excited to see what God is doing and going to do.

The REAL me is standing up. How about you?