The Dailies

What a wonderful weekend it was.
My house was bursting at the seams.
I like having a revolving door in our home.
This weekend our door revolved quite a bit.

My son and daughter-in-love came home for the weekend.
One of their friends was getting married.
Many of their college friends were also invited to the wedding.
A whole group of those college friends stayed at our house.

I had five additional young adults in my home.
My youngest daughter was also home for her January term break.
Every bedroom along with our basement had suitcases, coats, shoes, and extra blankets.
I had so much fun making wonderful things for breakfast and baking favorite desserts.

What a blessing it was for me to talk with them as they sat in our kitchen.
Their thoughts and perspective on the world challenged me.
We discussed everything from movies to current events.
The future is in good hands.

I enjoyed talking to all of them.
One of their friends is a youth pastor in California.
It was so interesting to hear his heart.
It was so interesting to hear what concerns the middle school students he pastors.

Social media presents a huge problem.
They have a fear of missing out so they constantly check their devices.
Their cell phones are always in their hands.
He requires the students to deposit their cell phones into a large bucket.

The cell phone bucket is placed into a locked closet near the room where the youth meet.
Their phones are returned at the end of the night.
They have learned that in this setting, the phones are unnecessary and are a distraction.
They are learning to talk to each other again, face to face.

I asked him what issues the students struggle with the most.
He said that body image is the issue that causes the most problems.
They measure their worth and their value against the false standards of the world.
They fail to see their worth based on what God says about them.

Social media is a problem for them since they are always comparing themselves to others.
They struggle with contentment because they are always checking in and scrolling through.
I listened and then rephrased what he had just said to me.
They fail to realize that they are only watching a highlight reel; they rarely see the dailies.

The dailies have the actual ups and downs of life.
The dailies will never make a good cover photo.
The dailies will not get them a lot of likes when they are posted on their wall.
The dailies do not put forth the profile a person chooses to present.

The highlight reel shows their life at its best.
The highlight reel can be edited to display only what they want to show.
The highlight reel is not a full assessment of their life.
The highlight reel is the best of everything, even when their actual life does not match it.

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others. (Brennan Manning)

We are not approachable when only the best of ourselves is on display.
We hide behind the edits.
We hide behind the perfect posts.
We hide behind the pictures of restaurant food and check-ins.

We fear vulnerability because we think it makes us appear weak.
We fear transparency because opaque  is so much safer.
We fear silence because it says too much.
We fear missing out because we have centered our lives on the fleeting and the temporary.

I asked this young man if he ever gets discouraged.
He admits that he does.
So many things are competing for our attention.
First things first often shows us our skewed priorities.

This young man, my son’s friend, is very special to me.
The students in his youth group are blessed to have him as their youth pastor.
His tender spirit and compassion immediately capture you.
Not everyone is like him, nor should they be.

He speaks often to his students about differences being a good thing, a God-created thing.
Sameness is overrated, he tells them.
Same body type, same interests, same ethnicity, same race: boring.
God created a myriad of beautiful people made in His image, all different, all special.

I listened and then rephrased what he had just said to me.
It’s like a box of Crayola crayons, I said as he looked at me.
One box, but inside there is a rainbow of colors, all beautiful, all different, all necessary.
Sameness is overrated, I repeated and he laughed.

I wish I had a box of Crayola crayons that I could have given him before he left.
I hugged him and told him that I would pray for him.
You are on the front lines; don’t get discouraged.
Stay close to the Lord; you are doing important work, I reminded him.

Crayola crayons.
One box with a rainbow of colors.
All beautiful, all different, all necessary.
The dailies are filled with unedited, honest, and transparent beauty.

The highlight reel is something we can hide behind.
When we hide the dailies, we are concealing who we are.
We cannot expect to be known if we only present the cleaned up, edited version.
Our wounds can be a balm to others if only we allow them to be seen.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3,4)