The Party That Never Quits

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks -
masks that I'm afraid to take off
and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me
But don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
within as well as out
that confidence is my name
and coolness is my game,
that the water's calm
and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me. Please!

My surface may be smooth but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weaknesses
and fear exposing them.
That's why I frantically create my masks to hide behind.
They're nonchalant, sophisticated facades to help me pretend,
To shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation,
my only salvation
and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
and if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself
from my own self-built prison walls
from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.
That glance from you is the only thing that assures me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.

But I don't tell you this.
I don't dare.
I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh
and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing, that I'm just no good
and you will see this
and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game
With a facade of assurance without
And a trembling child within.
So begins the parade of masks,
The glittering but empty parade of masks,
And my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's nothing
And nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
Do not be fooled by what I'm saying
Please listen carefuly and try to hear
what I'm not saying.
Hear what I'd like to say
but what I can not say.

I dislike hiding.
Honestly.
I dislike the supificial game I'm playing,
the superficial phony game.
I'd really like to be genuine
and me.
But I need your help, your hand to hold
Even though my masks would tell you otherwise.

It will not be easy for you.
Long felt inadequacies make my defences strong.
The nearer you approach me
The blinder I may strike back.
Despite what the books say of men, I am irrational;
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
You wonder who I am?
You shouldn't
for I am everyman
and everywoman
who wears a mask.
Don't be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.

~Charles C. Finn (1966)
no relation

(Found this looking for something else on my old blog. It was more true then than it is now... but it still resonates.)

What I heard my pastor say on Sunday:

"raise your hand...tired...weary...raising children"

Surely, and without pride, up goes my hand.

And only my hand.

The pastor asked me what else I lie about...

An elder laughs.

A friend four rows behind me busts out with "I knew it!"

Adam leans over and whispers:

"yeah, that was a negative question Jen."

Turns out, what he'd actually said was

"Raise your hand if you never feel tired or wearing raising children."

“There is a darkness that would love to choke out a woman’s gift of worship. I have, at times, walked through what feels like fire and ice trying to muster up the courage to step out and really lead people in prayer. To this day that battle still rages; I am at odds with the voices that would insinuate how unworthy I am of this post. That insinuation is, of course, a warped truth. I am unworthy, and yet the mad, glorious way of God is to take unworthy people and declare them to be suited for ministry; and through their lives, reconcile the world to Himself. In the midst of so much deception and fear, I can only be equipped to lead God’s people in sung prayer and worship if I abide in the heart of the Father, take up the cross of Christ, and receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit. These three attitudes of receptivity to God are integral to my ministry; receptivity is a great gift of being feminine; and like Mary, mother of Jesus, we receive Him in order to then “birth” Him into the world…in other words, in receiving God, we can give Him to others”.

::~ Audrey Assad