Masquerade?

If you read Wednesday's post "Collectivitis", you know that each Friday I will be sharing one of the elephants from my elephant collection.  I hope you enjoy it.  Here's the very first elephant to be featured.

Its markings are like that of a giant fingerprint with the eye the center of the whorl.  This zebra-elephant is one of my favorite in my assorted collection of elephants: given to me years ago by a little boy—now a successful young man—who spent two and a half years in our home with his sister as foster children.

I like this elephant particularly because of its black and clear stripes marking it, but also it’s super thin frame, antithetical to its live counterpart.  Everything about this elephant screams “I’m NOT an elephant! I don’t want to be an elephant!”

How often have I gone through my life—daily?—undercover, so to speak, to the world, projecting the persona, feelings, thoughts, ideas, appearance of what I think I wish the world to see in my real soul’s place.  Why? Is it camouflage to protect myself?  Is it fashion through which to make a statement? 

There’s a theory—the Johari Window--named after the first names of its inventors, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, which describes human interaction including our illusions of self.

	Known to Self	Not Known to Self
Known to Others	OPEN	BLIND
Not Known to Others	HIDDEN	UNKNOWN

Window pane number three (things known to self but hidden from others) allows us to erroneously believe that we can truly hide all those things about ourselves that we don’t wish others to know—the elephant creates the illusion of “thinness” or “zebraness”.  What my poor little elephant and hence my poor little ego tend to forget is the existence of the second window pane (things about self known to others but not to self).

Those most disconcerting events in my life are those which cause me to see, if only for a second, that the camouflage is just a thin veneer—after all, even with the stripes, the thin plastic body, everyone can still see it represents an elephant.

The true self, is that self that God knows.  Though only He knows how often I’ve tried to fool Him, thinking I can pull a window pane 3, when in fact, it’s window 2 through which He sees me…and still He loves me.  He works with me, no matter what I show Him—and the world. 

Grace, incredible grace!