Is That Who You Are?

The one question we should all pause to ask ourselves occasionally. Is that who you are?

 

When I was in the seventh grade I stood before the mirror one day and practiced standing slightly pigeon-toed for the good part of an hour. A girl I barely knew, one just a few years older than me with smooth, tanned skin, the coolest clothes, and perfectly stacked bangs – she stood that way.

I angled my feet in and out at varying degrees, trying to get my reflection to look just right. The toes were the ticket, my 12 year old brain had decided.

Later that afternoon at a baseball game I tried out my newly acquired skill. I leaned back against the chain link fence carefully, turned my heels out just right, cute, when a boy I knew walked by. He stopped, took one look at me, and simply asked, “Why are you standing like that?”

It was that obvious.

I retired that stance on the spot. It wasn’t me.

Recently Timothy Willard wrote about the simple question he asks his girls when he see these co-opted behaviors, words or actions in them. “Is that who you are?” He gently pries. His children have almost come to expect it. They know what their dad is getting at and his heart behind the question.

I have seen those adopted behaviors in my own children at times. They’re quite obvious – words and phrases they’ve picked up from a movie, attitudes and even outfits that are less creativity and more imitation.

In more grown up and socially acceptable ways, I still see them in myself from time to time. If only I could be organized like her, lead and speak like her, decorate like she does, eat clean like her – that must be the ticket. I attempt to whip myself into shape, stand slightly pigeon-toed at a different angle. Perhaps it’s a little less obvious these days, but it’s the same game.

I love the generosity, the engagement, of Willard’s simple question as a loving father. Is that who you are? It’s an invitation to honesty, to give pause, to think, to dialogue, to remember.

Digging deeper

Once Jesus sat weary by a well and asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Not knowing this stranger, the woman engaged him, asking a few questions of her own. Jesus revealed a bit of who He was and continued to draw this woman out with His words.

“Go, call your husband, and come here.” (John 4:16)

Jesus knew exactly who this women was. He knew well the long line of lust and brokenness that was both this woman’s past and present. His instruction was less a directive, and more a heart-searching invitation.

I see. I know. But is that who you are?

The gentleness of Jesus’s engagement is striking to me. He convicts without shaming, corrects without degrading, lays bare without humiliation. It’s a contrast we rarely see in our world.

And in response what has been this woman’s shame becomes her testimony.

“Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (4:29)

Her question becomes the invitation to everyone around her.

 “And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all that I ever did.” (4:39)

That’s powerful, friend. For her and for all who knew her. For us, our children, and all who hear our testimony, which becomes the invitation to know Him.

His conviction is kindness. May we be brave enough to ask the question and brave enough to answer it.