I had great ambitions to write regularly during my time in Switzerland sharing about the leadership and personal growth lessons that I was learning. While I did in fact learn a lot, I wrote very little (none actually). It turns out that jet lag and I don't make very good friends. This was my first time meeting Mr. Jet Lag. Given my normally bad sleep patterns I thought Mr. Lag and I would get along pretty well last week. Instead, he crept up from behind and sucker punched me right in the nose and then continued to kick me while I was down.
I sat down to write several times and each time was firmly rebutted by my jet lag. The thoughts I managed to write down looked a lot like the middle-of-the-night ideas that seem brilliant/hilarious/world-changing in the moment only to be revealed to be the ramblings of a sleep deprived lunatic when morning comes. So if any of you missed hearing from me last week (shout out to my mom and grandma!) I apologize. I am back in the saddle again after sleeping nearly as much the past two nights as I did all of last week.
Travel, stress, fatigue and jet lag have a way of stirring up thoughts, emotions, and character issues that most of us would rather keep hidden. For me this was especially true upon returning home. My girls, who I had missed terribly while gone, ended up on the receiving end as I vented frustration and anger that bubbled to the surface in my tired state. I have spent years trying to deal with those issues so seeing them rearing their ugly heads once again came as a bit of a surprise.
My first response to seeing this ugly, jet lagged Aaron was to try and dismiss the whole thing by saying "I'm not myself". Rather than apologizing to my girls for my clearly wrong behavior I actually made excuses about being tired. In my mind I was trying to distance myself from the ugliness that I was displaying. I failed to take responsibility for the words leaving my mouth and the actions being done with my own body. A bit of reflection later on helped me see that this dismissive behavior is a very curious bit of the human experience.
I think a lot of us tend to treat our ugly behavior in this same dismissive way by trying to justify it based on our circumstances (in my case jet lag). Rather than owning our words and actions we excuse them and shift the blame on to something or someone else. How peculiar that we can look at words coming out of our own mouths and avoid blame by saying "I'm not myself". We even do this baseless justifying for others when they are displaying ugliness we'd rather not have others associate with that person.
The question I asked myself when I was justifying my behavior was "whose behavior is this if not your own?" It was just too easy to say "I'm not myself." Instead of looking deeper to see where it was coming from I wanted to separate that behavior from myself. In distancing myself from my behavior I realized that I have an idealized version of myself that I try to project into the world. This idealized self can easily become a coping mechanism for avoiding blame with my ugly behavior. When I fail to live up to my ideal self I can simply dismiss the wrongness of my words and behavior by saying I am not being "myself".
It doesn't take a genius to realize that this convenient way of justifying my ugly, jet lagged behavior doesn't really hold up. If I wasn't being myself then who was I being? What I came to realize is that my ugly behavior is far more reflective of my true self than the idealized self I wanted my daughters and others to know. What if the ugliness that came out in my fatigue was really a more accurate picture of where my heart was at?
There is a very strong pull for us to try to hide our ugliness and distance ourselves from the sinful stuff in our lives. When the ugliness shows up we justify and excuse the behavior. Most of the rest of the time, rather than taking full ownership for the state of our hearts and dealing with it head on, we are able create a veneer of our "ideal self" through a whole bunch of other behaviors.
A lot of our good behavior, and more of our 'godly' character than we'd care to admit, have not actually come about by dealing with our ugliness or finding healing or actually repenting of sin. Instead, we keep up appearances of godliness by eliminating the triggers that reveal our ugly self. We seek security in finances, relationships, status, family and countless other places so that we can eliminate the stresses that reveal our lack of character. We fight endlessly for a stable, secure, well-rested lifestyle so that we can avoid our ugliness. The problem is that we haven't really dealt with our ugliness.
For me, my jet lag revealed that the 'work' I had done in dealing with anger and frustration issues never really dealt with the heart issues. Instead, I had built some things in to my life to avoid my triggers for ugliness: good sleep, a regular schedule, financial and relational security, and on and on. Seeing my ugliness as really being a part of me has given me hope that God will work deeper in my life. I don't want my character to be something that only shows up in the best of circumstances. It isn't really character if it disappears when I am tired, stressed, and things aren't going well. Our character is actually most revealed in those moments when our ugly self is most likely to rear its head.
One of the most refreshing things about living and working in the city and in impoverished contexts is the way that people don't hide from their sin and ugliness. They are often very aware of their failures and follies and don't run from them because in their poverty and relational brokenness they don't have the means to create the veneers that many in middle class contexts are so good at creating. Working where I do has helped me deal with my sin and ugliness and core heart issues in such a direct manner.
A few years ago I would have been content saying "I'm not myself" but now I can admit that "that ugly behavior is mine". No excuses. No justifying. No hiding. Just a chance to go to Jesus with all my ugliness. He doesn't want appearances, veneers, and our casual dismissal of our sin. He wants us to own all of it because he died for all of it. There is no guilt or shame in my ugliness because when I know it, confess it, and repent of it I can truly and finally be made clean, and pure and whole.
I may be wrong but I don't think I am the only one who has dealt with my sin and ugliness in this way. I leave you with some of the questions I have been processing these past few days with the hope that others like me might allow God to enter in to their struggles in a new way.
What triggers have you worked hard to avoid so that your sin doesn't surface? Have you truly dealt with the heart issues behind that sin and have you truly owned it? What ugliness shows up in your life when you are stressed, tired, and things are not going well? Do you own that ugliness or do you dismiss it? What does your idealized self look like? What does your ugly self look like? Which self do you try to show the world? Which do you try to show God?
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