The childlike part

I played Capture the Flag yesterday with 60 middle schoolers... 60 middle schoolers and me (a teaching faculty is apparently not as participatory as a camp staff). At one point, I was being pursued by a very small 6th grade boy. Just as I started to slow up to let him tag me, I started to fall. In the end, he tagged me at the moment I launched forward into a head first slide on the grass. His reaction was perfect: huge smile, loud cheer, inflated ego. He had single-handedly tackled a teacher.

Middle school is a funny group to work with (and thankfully, I only work with them from a distance). The sixth graders come in as kids - they're so excited to try everything (bring on the food relay, let me in that sumo wrestling suit, watch me eat my weight in s'mores), to make new friends, etc. Then, by eighth grade, they're too cool, too tough, too jaded (no way I'll shove a twinkie into my mouth, sumo suits smell, s'mores are too messy). They are already well-aware of how to play the "cool game", how to moderate and adapt their actions to project only the cool part of themselves to others... they've created less-than-genuine versions of themselves and that's what they let others see.

In the book Posers, Fakers, Wannabes, Brennan Manning and James Hancock talk about the importance of childlike innocence in our spiritual lives (in comparison to the carefully edited, well-manicured lives of the Pharisees). They write, "We have spread so many coats of whitewash over the historical Jesus that we scarcely see the glow of his presence anymore. Jesus is a man in a way that we have forgotten men can be: truthful, blunt, emotional, nonmanipulative, sensitive, compassionate - so liberated that he did not feel it unmanly to cry, so secure he could engage anyone head-on and deal with them right where they were. Underneath all our coverup, the gospel portrait of the beloved child of Abba is a man exquisitely in touch with his emotions and uninhibited in expressing them."

In the past weeks, I have repeatedly felt sick about my interactions with others. When I, for whatever reason, begin to edit who I am, I project a sickeningly over-confident version of myself. I talk instead of listen (even though I really want to listen); I tell stories to make myself seem more confident, more in control, less vulnerable to anything. That's the root of it - I project a "tough-girl" image because I don't want people to see that I might need help, that I might not have the answer, that I might not be good at something... because then, maybe they won't really want me around.

I need help in being held accountable to honesty and vulnerability in my life. I need to know that it's ok to risk making a mistake, not knowing the answer, messing up on a responsibility... that my identity isn't in what I do.