VALERIE SCHULTZ: 'Who are you' is a deeper question
| Friday, Nov 13 2009 03:25 PM
Last Updated Friday, Nov 13 2009 03:25 PM
Several nights ago, my daughter and her friend were reliving their childhoods by watching an old TV episode of "Goosebumps." Based on the popular books by R.L. Stine, "Goosebumps" premiered in the mid-1990s. When the series first aired, my daughter was not allowed to watch it, due to its propensity to induce predawn nightmares in young children. I have since learned that her older sisters used to let her watch it with them when they were baby-sitting her, because they didn't want to miss a single thrilling story. Parents are often the last to know.
The episode my daughter and her friend were recently watching concerned a young girl's Halloween mask, which wouldn't come off her face when trick-or-treating was over. The mask was a sickly green, deformed, alien sort of thing with snaggled yellow teeth. At first the timid girl liked the way the mask caused her to be aggressive, even mean, to those who usually bullied her, but as Halloween night wore on, the mask was taking over.
"Who are you supposed to be?" some passing trick-or-treaters asked her, as she frantically tried to remove the mask and found it seamlessly married to her neck.
"I'm supposed to be me, but I'm not!" came her anguished cry, her plaintive girl's voice emanating from the creepy head, as she ran away in panic. "I'm supposed to be me, but I'm not!" she repeated helplessly, hopelessly, as she fled into the night.
I left the room without seeing how the tale ended. It might have gone badly for the girl: as I recall, "Goosebumps" tales didn't always have happy endings. But her quandary stayed with me all evening, as that sentence replayed itself in my head. It took on a philosophical meaning. I know I'm supposed to be me, but sometimes I am not. How often do we find ourselves not being whom we were meant to be?
Who are you supposed to be? It is a question brimming with deep import, with challenge, with perhaps disillusionment. In our spiritual lives, we know that we are all called to be the person God created us to be. We also know that we can take some pretty unhealthy turns as we grow from the blessed beings we are at birth to adulthood. We make bad choices; we get off-track. We blunder thoughtlessly along until we encounter some sort of crisis that makes us take a good look at who we have become while we weren't paying attention. We're supposed to be us, but we're not.
Fortunately God affords us second, and third, and fourth chances. As the bumper sticker says, "God allows U-turns." I am privileged to volunteer with the Catholic chaplain at the nearby state prison. Sometimes the inmates I work and pray with talk about second chances and new beginnings. They hope that, when (or if) they are released on parole, they can right past wrongs. They plan how to walk an honest path, in the hope that they can become the men and fathers and husbands and sons they are supposed to be. Some of them work earnestly toward that goal. But they sometimes feel that they cannot ever be forgiven, not by their victims, not by their families, not by themselves, not even by God. The sense of being unforgiven is a heavy burden for a person to carry in the silence of his soul. But I believe, as I hope they come to believe, that God's compassion is infinite, and that God's grace can change the heart of anyone. The miraculous, after all, is God's specialty.
When we realize in our hearts that we are created as holy, we understand that within us lies the potential to be who we are supposed to be, even if we are not yet there. God has given us exactly the tools we need. Whether or not we use them to become the self we're supposed to be is up to us.
These are Valerie Schultz's opinions and not necessarily those of The Californian.
