Patsy Way: Jim Carrey and Me

Ok so he’s a man and I’m a woman;  he’s a movie star and I’m not; he lives in America and I live in New Zealand but really Jim Carrey and I, we’re the same. He plays characters and I do too. Bruce Almighty and I, we both often think we can do one heck of a better job at being God than God can do. We both play Truman Burbank, ( I think my Truman is slightly more feminine!) certain that there is a God way up there controlling and conniving, limiting us and enjoying raining suffering upon us purely for His entertainment. Are you shocked that I, a good Christian girl, can think like that?  Me too! In fact I spent most of my life warily watching the sky for that inevitable lightning to head straight for me and strike me down for having such heathen thoughts. But I’m still standing, I’m still questioning and I’m still searching, still grappling for answers to the question who am I, why am I here and who am I to God?

Jim Carrey and I, our characters are both on a quest to find who God is and hoping to find ourselves along the way. As I go through life trying to find my identity I try on different hats, I do a bit of this and a bit of that, yet I come up empty, unfulfilled. I want to be me, I cry out in frustration to God to give me an easy answer to who I am, a guide book, “Patsy for Dummies” that I can order from Book Depository – free shipping included. And as I’m crying out to God, frustrated and impatient, I hear His whisper, “how can you be you when you don’t like who you are, when you don’t know you like I know you?” And that right there is the crux of it all isn’t it? I don’t like me, I’m unsatisfied with who I am and I constantly compare myself to others, always coming out stone last in the very competition I myself created. Most importantly I don’t know the me God knows.

So how do I go about this terrifying journey of discovering who I am, and then liking, I dare say even loving, what I discover along the way? Could it be that the little cartoon boy on the poster in my Second Grade class room all those years ago, had it right when he proudly proclaimed, “God don’t make no junk!” (I’ll ignore the double negative if you will)? What if I were to start treating myself like I treat those around me, what if I build myself up instead of tearing myself down, what if I could encounter myself with unconditional positive regard, what if I loved myself, flaws and all? What if I could finally take the advice given to me time and again to be kinder to myself? I guess the very wise King Solomon got it right when he said in Proverbs that ‘Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel’. Could it be that finding my identity, loving myself comes down to listening to the words Jesus speaks over me rather than the cruel, harsh words I use? Can I lay aside my fiercely independent self, can this wounded healer find the courage to surrender to the Great Physician and allow Him to bring healing to my image of myself? Will I allow Jesus to show me the me He sees, will I believe that me is the real me?

Dr Suess is a pretty smart guy – he is a doctor after all – and he says, “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you”. Here, once again, I am confronted with a Jesus who says He created me to be me, who says he loves this me, this me, not the me I strive to be, not the me I see, but the me I am in His eyes, His beloved, worth dying for. As I go out on this journey of self-in-Jesus-discovery I know that E.E Cummings is right in saying that, “to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle and never stop fighting.” I am determined to take off the character masks I wear, I am committing to saying farewell to the cynical Bruce Almighty and the helpless Truman Burbank I have played for too long. I will learn, I will listen, I will make mistakes; and I will change as I grow, as I learn, and as I experience and this is a good thing. I am on a journey to do as Brennan Manning challenges, to reclaim my core identity as Abba’s Child. So whilst I was  Truman, stuck in a false world image of me, created for me and by me, I have come to the end of this world ; I am banging my fist against this ‘self and other’ created boundary and I am breaking out of this limited world. Lisa Bevere reminds me that, the limitless God didn’t create me to be limited. So today I’m going to try be me, to listen to my Jesus when He whispers truth and love to me; and tomorrow I’m going to have to start all over again, then when the next day comes, still I will fight to hear Jesus voiceover my own and I will never stop fighting because, - as L’Oreal and Jesus say “I’m Worth It”.