What Not to Wear 4

Spilling God’s Fruit

A week ago, I wrote about how I’ve struggled with writing honestly about my own experiences on this blog. I had, in fact, put the blog on sabbatical while I thought about and dealt with my everyday life, and issues that are peculiar to my own family. And, then, I’ve wrangled with developmental concerns that influence many women of my age. Turning 50 was a ringing alarm clock for me; I could see that my life had sped by and was careening on at a breakneck speed. The next 30 years of my life, if I have 30 left, will pass just that quickly, too. What will I make of them?

As well, I’ve been stuck, stuck because I gave up one career to pick up another in order to provide for our large family; stuck because my daughter died and I was changed in unalterable ways and could not return to who I was before her death; stuck because by middle age I had already done all I’d ever planned or wanted to do in my life, yet found I was still alive and had many years of living ahead of me, with not a clue as to what I ought to be doing. I could not return to my old life, but a new life had not yet arrived.

I felt blue and displaced, like a nomad in my own life. I didn’t know what to do with myself or this blog, so I went AWOL. Via email, a blogging friend encouraged me to blog about my journey, because she had received a lot of help and support from other bloggers when she did so.

I thought about her advice for awhile and decided it was good advice. I returned to blogging with a renewed interest in writing about my life, my feelings and perceptions. One of the first things I wrote after my sabbatical was titled simply “Birth Mother.” This post was about my daughter, Mari’s, recent contact with her birth mother and her decision to reject ongoing relationship. Although the post was clearly only about one particular adopted person, one particular birth mother, and one particular adoptive mother (me), the post nevertheless created controversy among a handful of people who flocked here and attacked me because they generalized what I wrote to all mothers who have given children up through adoption.

Many comments were made, and many, if not most, were mean-spirited, judgmental, angry, and unkind. Some of my reactions were among these. Though objectionable posts were removed, and most of us made peace via email, still, something about the situation rankled me. Something was not right.

This week my entertaining and amusing foray into the fashion world, in which I learned What Not to Wear, converged with my writerly and spiritual selves through the realization that what I offer to others is offered as an image. This is true: What I offer to others, I offer as an image. This leads me to ask myself, “How am I representing the self God created and has transformed? Am I doing an adequate job?”

Lately, I have had to answer “not as well as I might” to these questions. The images I’ve presented in the recent past have been haphazard, whimsical, and sometimes reactionary rather than single-minded, purposeful, and focused. I’ve not been a good steward of the treasure of my self because in the past I developed a habit of confusing my self with my image, rather than developing a self that projected its own true image. I need to continue to cultivate new habits of being and living.

The word image comes from the Latin word imago, meaning a copy or likeness. If what I wear, say, write, and do are not accurate copies or likenesses of my self, then what are they? They are all still images, pictures and representations of something. If I’m thoughtless or careless about what I wear, for example, I will put on any old thing; or perhaps I’ll wear whatever’s in “style,” but in any case I will be like the Andy Sachs character in The Devil Wears Prada, and leave home having been dressed by the people in the fashion industry.

This is not the likeness of the me that God created and has called according to His purpose.

Makeover

All that I’ve learned recently about image and appearance finally trickled down to my spirit. Just as I’ve been going through my closets and drawers, tossing, donating, and tailoring my clothing, so too do I see the need for ongoing revitalizations of my environment, both inner and outer.

To that end, I’ve gone through Third Eve and deleted everything, comments and all, that did not provide an accurate image of who I am, or of who the commentators are who regularly read this blog, and whose blogs I read. A few days ago, I thought that leaving our recent posts up, along with the comments, was the best course. They did, after all, illustrate some sort of truth about human nature.

But what they did not do was to provide true likenesses of the precious human beings involved, regardless of whether the people involved were regulars and friends here, or were rallied here by others to come and attack the woman they objectified through name-calling. Everyone is loved by someone else; everyone is someone’s friend. The fact is, we change our minds about people as we read their entire blogs and get to know them, because we can see their humanity. We are less likely to judge and attack a person whom we know likes us, or a person we know is a good and decent human being. It’s all too easy to make an error in judgment based on a first impression, taken out of the context of another person’s self, even if it is only a partial self as revealed on a blog.

I think this purging of Third Eve is the right decision for me, because what I removed did not and could not offer an accurate likeness of my inner self. What I removed didn’t offer accurate depictions of others, either. As well, some commentators have been so deeply wounded through adoption that they do not yet seem able to present accurate representations of their true, whole selves in their adoption-related writing. Their wounded and unwell selves are keening, lamenting, and sometimes lashing out, as the wounded do when they’re crazed with their own pain. I’ve been there when I’ve been in pain. Even so, a person is more than her pain, more than his opinions at any given moment; we are more than our reactions. So, when our reactions give out an image that does not fit us well, that reaction must go. As the Bible says, “Love covers a multitude of sins.”

Through love, I’ve deleted entire posts and responses to them, because beautiful, precious people offered ugly depictions that were so much less than they could have offered. I erred, too, by carelessly offering less than an accurate depiction of my real self.

I’m going to work harder at trying to produce an accurate likeness of my real self in everything I write. Certainly, people will react to what I write about myself, and projection and other neurotic reactions will still occur. There will always be wounded and unwell people who reel out of control in reaction to others; much of the time, they can’t be stopped or controlled. But I can train and try to exercise self-control in my writing, in my responses to others, and in the way I go along my own path. I determine what imago I give to others as a gift.

I know I don’t want the image I offer to be What Not to Wear. I want what I offer here, and in fact through everything I show and do, to offer something real.