I had an incident the other day that made me want to write this.
My natural instinct is to be super cynical about it, and things probably aren’t ever going to change with people, but I want to talk about it a bit. It’s my personality. It’s how I was born.
It’s who I am.
You think you know me.
And that person you have in your head, isn’t who I am. I am going to let you down.
Why is it when we meet our childhood hero, we are almost always disappointed? We find out he or she struggles with x y or z, or aren’t as compassionate as we’d like them to be. The band we idolize weren’t the nicest people in the world as they were loading in their merch? And we’re upset.
Someone a few days ago told me after an exchange of dialogue that they were disappointed in me. That someone of such high morals, who claims to have such high respect for women shouldn’t have acted in this specific way. I honestly didn’t think anything of it, it was a small comment. And I want to justify it here so you don’t assume it’s the worst case scenario, however that is such a moot point. It was a small comment that offended my friend.
That friend had this image of me.
I’ve never claimed to have such high morals, or think better or act better than others, or claim to have such high respect for women. I try to live my life the best I can, and I stumble up hill doing so. I’m very much human and make a lot of mistakes. I constantly bite the hand that feeds me and I do not deserve the Lord or his grace or to go on the World Race or any of my friends or any opportunities that I have at all. It is by grace alone that I’m even breathing.
The person that lets you down isn’t the person I claim to be. If you know anything of my story, you know I struggle with self-worth. I barely have the strength to be content with myself as I am, let alone claim to be something I am not.
And we do this to others constantly. We have this image of our friends that they aren’t. Then when they let us down we are upset. We do this to God. We expect him to be something he hasn’t ever claimed to be, and when he doesn’t live up to the image we expect him to be… we’re let down.
I don’t have an answer to this conundrum that has me weary so. Perhaps we should just remember that our friends, heroes, or people we look up to are humans. People.
People are messy. We make mistakes, lots of ‘em.
Let’s not give up on people simply because we’re rough around the edges.
