The Broken Mask of Believers

Posted by parkejladd on Jan 19, 2010 in Featured {Article} | 5 comments

I am unsettled.

A certain restlessness stirs in me as I sit drinking hot tea within the confines of my apartment.  It’s 3am.  I can’t sleep.  I’m drowsy but wide awake.  I’m ready but unable to move.  I’m knowing but not quite enough.  I’m energized with nothing to accomplish.  It’s quiet but I’m having a hard time listening.  I simply sit.  And wait.  My head and heart compete for attention like blood thirsty rivals who chose long ago to live in the same house.  I can feel them quietly stealing from one another like enemy ants rapidly scurrying back and forth between where my brain and heart reside, carrying away stolen bits and pieces of each others homes in order to grow their personal mounds of accumulation.  The space between, the gap, the trenches now worn and filled with black ants and red, taking from each other in order to build their kingdoms within the borders of my restless flesh and bones.  The red take from the black and the black from the red.  They meet somewhere in the middle with crooked, evil smiles and rushed antenna nods in attempt to disguise the identity of their stolen property, quickly continuing on their way.  I can feel each of their hinged legs lightly touching down as they scamper back and forth along my spine trying desperately to store up enough of what the other has before the long, cold winter comes and there’s no more time to steal, no more time to store up, no more time to scurry about.  The trading of assets between my heart and my head leaves me unsettled as valuable pieces of who I once claimed to be are exchanged between colonies, each constantly hoping for a permanent place of rest and purpose.

Taken aback.

People tend to look at you strangely when you tell them these things.  When they ask you how you are, and you respond, “Honestly, unsettled.”  They tend to hasten their eyes, crumple their noses, and furrow their brows in deep, agonizing inquisition as to the nature and extent of your current, verbalized status update.  They take a step back, look a little closer, and internally begin to wrestle with your response as if something has genuinely upset them, thrown them off kilter, and caused them to question their own personalized form of sanity.  Unsettled.  Uneasy.  Uncomfortable with the way things are.  Unbalanced according to which ants worked harder the evening before.  Uneasiness breeds uneasiness.  It spreads from person to person until the entire room is declaring, “Party over!”  Uneasiness is rude like spending cocktail hour drinking a heavy pint of black brew instead of the routine, well-dressed, pink martini.  Uneasiness spreads until the tuxes and ballroom gowns are equally upset, and together we’re blown from one corner of the room to the next like fallen leaves pushed about by an eternal, unseen breeze.  Inwardly fallen leaves temporarily accepting of this identity because outwardly we’re clothed in bright yellow, burnt orange, red, and deep purple facades of seemingly esteemed perfection.  Outwardly beautiful, yet inwardly already dead, already detached from our source of life–wasting away–tossed about from one corner to the next not knowing where we’ll land and what our purpose will be when and if we ever do.  Unsettled.  People give me funny looks when I tell them I’m unsettled.  Like I need roots.  Like I need to settle down and settle in.  Like I need therapy.  Like I need to sit down and talk to someone.  Someone.  Someone who deals with people who are unsettled.  People who don’t have it all figured out.

Figure it out.

So I pretend to have it all figured out.  Wake up, kiss wife goodbye, go to work, clock out, get paid, come home, play with kids, brush teeth, go to bed.  Check, check, check, and check.  I live a checklist life so people can’t see my cracks.  I apply male cosmetics otherwise known as differing shades of pride and walk about the earth wearing well polished armor and mask to conceal the scars.  It’s acceptable.  “Pride is acceptable,” I convince myself.  I whiten my teeth, clean my car, press my suit, style my hair, go to church on Sunday morning, watch football, and cut my weedless grass.  Look at me and my neatly trimmed, dark green yard with white picket fence providing just enough buffer between me and the rest of the world.   I’ve got it all figured out.  I’ve got it all figured out until my clean, unsuspecting world starts to tremble and shift as the incomplete foundation of my heart, stolen away over time by nimble ants and embedded arrogance, can no longer stand on its own.  My kingdom’s buildings collapse upon me, and before I have time to reorganize and cushion my fall I find myself buried beneath the rubble, surrounded by people I ignored, fenced myself in from, and passed each day now screaming out in agonizing pain, dying beneath me as the residual debris from my former kingdom buries them alive, unable to move, unable to shift their heads, unable to breathe, unable to lift the concrete slabs off of themselves, unable to make sense of the chaos trapping them in the darkness.  I can hear them shouting for Jesus as their lives are slowly, helplessly drown out by the shadows of night and lack of hope for morning.  Their souls escape through the cracks and crevices left between the bricks and metal compressing their physical bodies as their voices are silenced once more, and their flesh is pushed to the grave.

If Jesus came by.

I’m an unsettled recluse in this life.  I hide my uneasiness behind a molded smile, crisp, green pieces of government issued paper, and social charity work for the so called poor.  I used to think that once certain decisions were made life would start to even out.  The storm would become calm.  The waves would stop sweeping over the boat and the wind would simply stop blowing.  The ants would start getting along and the leaves would slowly fall to the ground in graceful, easy, comfort.  I thought peace meant an absence of storms, an absence of uneasiness.  I used to think if Jesus came by my booth I would leave my pitiful tax collecting and simply follow Him.  No more crying out, “Save me!  I’m going to drown!”  No more being unsettled.

I’ll airbrush my way to freedom.

I’m unsettled by the tumultuous battle occurring between my desperate heart longing for something more and my stable, smart brain that implores me to stay on the steady, wide path.  The battle between actually living faithfully and just living with the knowledge of faith permeates to the core of who I am and constantly presses me to the fringes of uneasiness.  Uneasiness.  Suppressing uneasiness is easy.  Choose to ignore the war, and no one ever really dies.  Airbrush over my red, raised, pus brimming flaws and fill in my deep, jagged cracks.  I have it all figured out.  I will airbrush my way onto magazine covers and freedom.  I will ignore the ants and pretend as though my kingdom never fell.  I will live in constant admiration of the outer beauty I’ve managed to create, refine, and constantly update throughout my life.  People will neither hate me nor love me.  They will simply be lost with me somewhere in the in-between.  In the safety of the surface.  In the comfort of the fumes being released from the airbrush.  I will breathe them in.  Maybe kill a few ants.  Maybe sustain my kingdom for another day.  I will destroy my uneasiness and declare to the rest of the world that this Christian has it all figured out, and if you don’t than you need some of what I’ve got.

Unsettled behind the mask.

The perfect facade.  The best disguise money can buy.  The best flaw-covering foundation organic chemists ever produced.  Mask your blemishes and conceal your mistakes.  Let’s put our best face forward, uneasy as it may be.  Uneasy.  I’m uneasy.  I’m unsettled.  It’s 4 am.  I can’t sleep tonight.  My mask is in need of attention.  I’m starting to bleed through the cracks.  Dark red blood turning violet blue, staining my tan colored clay.  I’ll do some repair work in the morning.  Or maybe not.  Maybe I’ll peel away the putty and simply let the reality of who I am be the reality of who I am.  Maybe I’ll stop hiding.  Stop pretending.  Stop pretending that I have it all figured out. 

I don’t believe me.  I don’t believe the man in the mirror with clay and glue dripping from his face.  I don’t recognize me behind the mask.  I can’t sleep tonight.  My mask is putty in my trembling hands.  They’re covered in it.  Sticky, wet, warm, gray putty oozing through my finger tips, splashing on the floor beneath me.  I’m unsettled.  And I’m okay.