Window Facade

I was watching a movie yesterday and the characters were window dressers at a popular department store.  They each had a window and competed to see whose window was better. At one point in the movie, the woman looked to her co-worker and said "I'm like a window - a facade.  I create perfect images for others to admire".  Wow!  I quickly jotted that down because it is so true of so many of us.

We think we are expected to look a certain way, behave a certain way, have the right family, home, drive a certain car.  What we are doing in our lives is creating a Facade that we can never measure up to.  We buy the latest styles and dress ourselves to match what everyone else is wearing.  We go into debt to have the perfect house so that it appears we have it all.  We drive certain cars because they look better than what we can truly afford.   Have you ever invited someone to your house and then told your family "Don't talk about this...", "Don't say that...", "Don't embarrass me".  You want your family to be someone they are not to impress the guest.  Have you ever went out to buy a new dress just to impress a man on a date?  Worn something totally out of character for you?  You are building a facade - giving a false impression of who you truly are. 

I am guilty of this.  The whole summer before my 20 year class reunion I worked out every single day.  I was trying to get into better shape so that I could show everyone that I wasn't who I was in high school.  I was fit.  I wasn't an ugly duckling anymore.  I wanted them to notice me.  Its funny how the "mean" girls noticed me right away.  They said it was because of my smile or my eyes.  The guys didn't' know who I was.  The window coverings had been changed and they didn't know me.  What I realized was they didn't see me then, and they weren't seeing ME now.  They were seeing a facade.  Who I am is in that smile and in my eyes, not in the dress I wore or the size I am.  I have lived much of my adult life trying to look a certain way.  I achieved it once - but it was fleeting.  I eventually had to stop working so hard on keeping up appearances so that I could live my life.  I want to be known by the size of my heart and the love that I give and not by the size of my home or the designer clothes I wear or the number on the scale.  I am me.  I accept who I am because I am "fearfully and wonderfully made".  God knit my innermost being and knew me before I was even born.  Nothing about who I am or what I look like is an accident - I was shaped and dressed by God.  So are you.  Lets try to live this next year true to ourselves - no facades.  Lets accept others for who they are, not for what they look like.  Because who they truly are is underneath the window dressing.  I don't want to live trying to create perfection for others to admire.  I want to live loving who Christ created me to be.