Note from the author: This piece was written a little over a year ago, and all of the characters herein described have grown in maturity since. Some names have also been changed to protect privacy.
I click through my selfies. The ones with my button-up red and blue shirt. The ones with my red jacket. Daring the world. Telling them “Check this guy out.”
Click. Click. Click.
There are some of the newer ones. Me in my undershirt. Me with cool hair. Me in a tank-top and sunglasses, looking over my sleeveless shoulder, really giving the “Look who’s hot” face.
Click. Click. Click.
It reminds me of what Gandalf said about Gollum and the ring, “He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself.”
That’s exactly how I feel about selfies.
For a split second, they give you the power to make yourself whoever you want to be. You can freeze that moment in time and actually look how you want.
But the thing about my selfies, is that I don’t look necessarily how I want, but how I think other people would want.
Or at the least, how a teenager is expected to look, even though my ‘hot’ look is creepy and trying to seem cool just makes me seem weird instead.
If I had been given the chance, like Lucy in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, to make myself beautiful, “beyond the lot of mortals,” I would have taken it.
And despite Aslan’s warnings, I, like Lucy, would definitely not have passed up on an opportunity to hear what my friends really thought of me.
Other people’s’ opinions are of paramount importance.
Being loved is paramount.
Being considered awesome and cool and somebody’s ‘best friend’ and even just nice to look at are all paramount.
But it hasn’t always been that way.
The beginning of adolescence was hard for me. I am a very dramatic person—and this was no different.
I felt like my childhood was dying, and I plunged deeper into self-inspection.
I thought I was ugly. I needed people to think I looked nice. I felt like I didn’t fit in and like I didn’t have any friends. I hated ‘cool’ people.
In other words, I was very dramatic.
But my feelings were real—it was real and hard. I didn’t like it.
When I see younger guys, I remember how it was for me then and I’m drawn to them because I know that, even if they’re not as dramatic as I was, they’re going through some hard stuff and having to re-see the world for the first time.
One guy in particular, named Aaron, has been on my heart, to the point where I have dreamed about him and even felt a sort of fatherly affection towards him for a time.
I think I am specifically drawn to him for two reasons: first, because of how much I’m around him (he does dance with me and comes over frequently) and second, because he is preoccupied with his looks.
For a while, he was sending me selfies a lot and asking for hair advice.
I responded by sending him some of my own selfies—and also by silently praying for him, worried that like me, he was starting to make an idol of his appearance.
I scroll past a picture of him in one of our dance productions, posing as a newsboy.
It was after one of these that I had a dream about him. I was praying a lot for him then and also praying for God to speak to me through dreams.
I wrote this in my journal:
“I had a dream after our performance that Aaron died, and I was the only who knew—like I was somehow responsible. I was so sad. . .I don’t know if this was part of the dream or if it was later when I was thinking about it, but I talked to Miss Judith [our dance teacher] and was like, ‘Don’t tell anyone, but Aaron died.’—like I killed Aaron, but not really. There was just guilt and sadness.”
For awhile after and before that dream, I prayed a lot for Aaron, almost immediately coming to the conclusion that it symbolized spiritual death.
I felt like I was protecting him, taking care of him. As if he was my son.
I kept an eye on his walk with God.
Somewhere along the way, I came across this quote from Herman Riffel in his book Your Dreams: God’s Neglected Gift.
“People,” it said. “Are a common symbol in our dreams. Yet the most frequent mistake of dream interpretation is to take these dreams too literally. Over ninety percent of the time the people we dream about relate to something in ourselves.”
The first time I found that quote between the brown pages of his little dream book, I didn’t want to accept them totally readily. At least not without thinking it through.
I claimed that the dream felt too real to set aside as a mirror of myself, and because it had launched me to pray for Aaron more than I would have otherwise, I didn’t want to box it in.
Really, though, I knew that at least part of my resistance was due to the fact that it is much easier for me to encourage others in the Lord than to believe that the Lord wants to encourage me.
It didn’t take long for me to accept that the dream could be both for me and for Aaron, but even though my fatherly concern for Aaron did seem to mirror perhaps some of God’s concern for me, I didn’t see the correlation between my feeling of responsibility for Aaron’s death and God’s feeling of responsibility for my spiritual death.
Now, I don’t feel the same kind of worry and affection for Aaron that I did the year I had that dream.
I click back onto my computer’s Photos app. I find the selfies Aaron texted me.
Click. Click. Click.
His face in a forced cool look. His cheesy smile begging the question, “Don’t I look beautiful?” His dirty-blond hair, floppy yet perfectly in place.
Click. Click. Click.
His crazy bed-head picture—taken as a joke. His pictures after he just got his hair cut, looking blonder, his sports shirt making him look like a racecar driver.
Click. Click. Click.
The first thought that comes to mind: He’s just like me.
But I don’t feel the surge of emotion I would have even a few months ago.
I don’t want God to be that way. I don’t want Him to be like me. My emotions are so fickle. In the dream, I couldn’t stop Aaron’s death. I let him die.
Maybe though—I feel like God is me.
When He finds out I’m not reading my Bible or praying consistently, He stops praying for me. He stops talking. He gives me the silent treatment.
Just like when I ask Aaron about his life, and he says everything’s fine, I stop praying for him.
Before all of Aaron and my dance performances, our teacher sets aside some time for us to pray and listen to what God might want to tell us.
During those times, we try to hear God’s voice and allow Him to help us refresh our eyes so that we can see ourselves and others the way He does, with His glory bestowed on us.
It’s kind of like looking up and seeing a black sky full of beautiful, tiny white lights covering the whole expanse, so that you want to run around the world to see all of them, because you know you can barely take it in.
It’s like hearing rain, when you actually step out of your cocoon of the indoors, and stop being glum because the sky is gray and you’re inside.
When you actually go out and sit on the porch and are amazed just at the vastness of the sounds of the dripping. Just because of the thousands of distinct little tinks, because again there’s too many.
But instead, during this prayer time, we look at ourselves and each other—and we see amazing people that God is going to use (and already is using) in amazing ways.
We see brokenness that God loves and is redeeming.
We see the Spirit’s work in each others lives: the love He has put in our hearts for each other, the quiet listening spirit, the wisdom and insight, the patience.
And again we are amazed.
We say, “Stars are amazing and beautiful,” “Rain is amazing and beautiful,” “These people are amazing and beautiful” when really what we’re whispering in shock is “If this is creation, how amazing and beautiful is the Creator?”
It reminds me of the quote from C.S. Lewis’s Eternal Weight of Glory:“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…”
I love this time. I look forward to it. But part of me also dreads it.
Yes. Aaron is amazing and beautiful, and he needs to know this.
He needs his value not to come from what other people think about him but from what God thinks.
He needs to let God’s love surround him and just know that he is loved so, so much.
But to me, that doesn’t ring true. I don’t feel it.
I can’t feel it.
Does God really love me that much? Is He actually working in me, little, old me, too?
I can’t hear anything but silence when I try to listen during these times. I don’t hear anything but my own voice reminding me of all my sin, arguing with the silence.
And so I raise my hand (as our dance teacher has told us to do if we feel like we can’t hear anything) and then my friends come and pray over me and encourage me.
They put their hands on me, so that I can really feel the warmth of their love and, by extension, the love of God.
And I say, “Wow. God loves me so much. To give me all these amazing friends I can count on whenever I need them.”
But part of me is frustrated that I couldn’t hear God myself.
And part of me wonders if I’m really desiring the love of God or just the love of others.
If the love of others is the only way I can experience the love of God than what’s wrong with me?
Does God pray for me constantly? Or does he pray for me like I pray for Aaron—only after some great rush of emotion? Does He pray for me at all?
During these times of prayer, we are amazed.
These times of prayer are like the opposite of the selfie. They’re when we actually lose ourselves enough to find out who we really are. And that God loves us for who we really are.
But, in my case, all I can hear is this silence.
Sometimes, I do feel like God is responsible for my spiritual death.
I can’t stop my sin. I can’t feel the communion of prayer. I avoid prayer because it makes me feel guilty. But I can’t change myself.
Only God can change me. And it feels like He isn’t.
I haven’t had Aaron over for a while, though I still see him at dance.
The last time I had him over, I asked him about what he was reading in the Bible. He said that he wasn’t really reading the Bible that semester because it wasn’t required for his homeschool. That confirmed my worries.
The next morning, I showed him a video by the Skit Guys. The whole time, I was wondering how he’d respond.
Near the end, the guy representing humanity, named Tommy, said, “Tommy is God’s original masterpiece.” Later he said, “And so are you. God doesn’t make junk. You are an original masterpiece.”
The whole time I was nodding for Aaron, hoping he was really getting what that meant.
I’ve never watched that whole video by myself. I wonder if I even believe that for myself.
My problem is that my version of a masterpiece is a selfie–perfection, frozen in time, that can’t be ruined. And I know that is not what I am.
I cannot take a selfie for God. I cannot present Him with the deceptive white picket-fence world of a social media account. When He sees me, there is no protection. I’m naked. I’m dead.
And I know I can’t blame that death on Him, even when I want to.
So I look at myself and wonder, “How can I be God’s original masterpiece? How can I be good enough for God?”
Maybe God has grace for others, for Aaron, but I, on my part, have to earn His love. For Aaron, grace is a gift. Not for me.
In Romans 5:8, God says that He, “show His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
And John 3:16 speaks similarly: “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
I can’t stop Aaron from dying. I can’t stop myself from dying. I am completely powerless.
The question is can I let go of my pride long enough to believe that God can stop both of us from dying by His own death?
That the love I felt for Aaron in my dream was only a glimpse of His love for me?
That He would give His Son because He wants me to be His son?
Will I deny my pride?
And those are the same questions you have to ask yourself, dear reader.
Awkward Truth 