May I be brutally honest with you? Like trusted confidant over a cup of coffee, whispered confessional honest? I am weary of wearing masks. Yes, on one hand I am referring to global pandemic, COVID-19, save the humans face masks. The excitement of those wore off for me a while ago. And on the other hand, I’m talking about more figurative masks. The exhausting ones that I’ve woven and worn since childhood. It’s time to burn my masks to ashes in the fire. Let’s light them up together, shall we?
My first literal mask.
To start us off, here is a picture of my first ever literal mask. Halloween 1971. I was rocking the black cat vibes as a toddler – costume no doubt from Woolworth’s. That mask was thinly molded plastic with a tiny elastic string secured on both sides by equally tiny staples. The cheap elastic always snapped loose, and my dad had to reinforce it with “real” staples from his gunmetal gray office stapler.
I don’t really remember that mask and costume, but I imagine I enjoyed wearing it for a few hours that evening. No doubt I felt safe and secure with my dad, walking down our street in our suburban subdivision at dusk. Crunching leaves beneath our feet. Coming home with a plastic jack-o’-lantern full of candy. Protected. Loved. Valued. Not a bad mask at all, if you ask me.
My first figurative mask.
Several years later, came the first figurative mask I remember donning. It’s my earliest memory of feeling embarrassment or shame. I was in the third grade – still generally feeling protected, loved and valued. Our class had just returned inside from recess on the outdoor playground, and Miss Little instructed us to get our crayons out of our pencil boxes in our desks.
Now, you’ve got to remember that it was 1978. There was no forward thinking “flexible seating” options and shared work spaces in the classroom like today. No politically correct shared resources so everyone feels equal. Nope, our desks were individual with a hinged lid that lifted up to allow access to our own books, pencil box, paper, etc housed inside. My desk probably looked something very similar to this…
My very special crayons.
Anyway, my family didn’t have an excess of material wealth by any definition, but do you know what MY pencil box had at school? A brand new box of twenty-four name-brand Crayola crayons. Beautiful, sharp-pointed waxy hue sticks of endless possibility. I always made sure those crayons were put away neatly – all the points facing up and grouped by color families. To this day I STILL love a tidy box of good-quality crayons.
Imagine my horror when I opened my personal pencil box to find every single one of my crayons snapped in half by an anonymous classmate. I remember feeling dumbfounded. My eight-year-old cheeks got hot and my eyes brimmed with wetness. My crayons. Me. Not protected. Not loved. And not valuable.
Swallowing down the hurt.
I don’t recall many details after that, except that I wove and wore my first figurative mask. I distinctly remember slowly closing the lid of my desk, plastering an unaffected look on my face and calmly letting the teacher know I didn’t have my crayons that day. You see, I vowed that I would NOT let my third grade crayon assailant have the satisfaction of seeing my hurt.
Fast forward to eleven.
Fast forward a few years later to sixth grade. Same elementary school, except now it was 1981 and now I was eleven. Today we’d say I was a “tween”. Back then I was a “pre-teen”. Anyway, I was taller than most of the boys in my grade at that time. My hair was fine and poker straight, which was NOT a trend during the eighties decade. Lanky and shapeless was bad enough, but I also had a habit of raising my hand first and often in class. Because I knew the answers, so why not give them? In other words, I was an easy target among my peers. “Teacher’s pet.” “Goody-two-shoes.” “Priss.”
Even more dumbfounding than my broken crayons three years previous, the most popular boy in the whole school pulled me aside one day and asked me to “go with him”. Now, I know tween “dating” means a lot of different things to a lot of different folks in 2020. However, in elementary school in 1981, “going with someone” meant they were your girlfriend or boyfriend in name only. In other words, “going together” never meant that you actually WENT anywhere together. As in, no spending time together in school or afterwards. No sitting together at lunch. No hanging out together on the playground. What it DID mean is that you were accepted by a peer of the opposite sex. Big stuff when you are eleven (or twenty-one, or fifty).
Again I remember being totally shocked, and stammering that I’d “have to think about it”. In retrospect, that was a totally bad ass answer. In all reality, it was really me stalling for time because I had no earthly idea what to do.
So true to my word, I thought about it that night. A lot. And I processed the whole scenario like a naive eleven-year old with zero street smarts. And the next day, I strode across the polished gym floor of my elementary school during indoor recess and told this boy that I didn’t think I was old enough to have a boyfriend. But that, of course, I was flattered and thank you for asking me. And did I mention I told him this in front of his toadies – his posse of slightly less popular male friends? Yeah, not wise.
No one will ever want you.
Well, his boy unleashed a barrage of words on me unlike anything I had ever received. First, he laughed in my face. Loudly. Then he told me the whole thing was a dare. Then he proceeded to publicly declare me undesirable as a girl and as a human. In front of most every other boy in the sixth grade.
His exact words burned into my heart that day and are still there. “No one will EVER want you. EVER!”
My new mask.
And so I wove and wore a new mask from that day forward. The mask looks like a fiercely independent woman who can stand on her own two feet. One who nurtures and encourages, and doesn’t need to take care of her own body and soul with the same regard. One who minimizes her physical appearance as much as possible.
At fifty years old, I still deal with the scars of that wound. As a grown woman with a husband, three kids and some of the best friends on the planet. I cognitively understand and can logically explain away those incidents from my childhood. Yet, there is an eleven-year-old version of myself buried deep inside that still believes that boy. Likewise, anything similar said to me by other males since then has just reinforced the lie.
Somewhere way, way down in the pit of my soul, a sense of being unprotected and unlovable took root. Because of the lies I’ve been told by broken people over my life, I am prone to doubt my value. And I don’t fully depend on anybody but myself. As a result, I don’t fully trust anybody either. So, I withhold and protect a small piece of myself at all times. From my husband. From my closest friends. And from my Creator.
[Related content: Always Keep A Nice Tight Grip on the Reins.]Time to burn my masks to ashes in the fire.
You know what? It’s exhausting – wearing that mask. I wrestle with God all the time over it. He says to take it off. Throw it into the fire and burn it. And He will exchange the ashes for a beautiful crown. He will replace my hidden sorrow with joy. He will give me a spirit of thankfulness in place of a secret spirit of sadness. Free of my mask, I will be strong and straight and tall like a mighty oak tree. God, Himself, will see to it. And my mask-less life will be a testament to how glorious God is. (Isaiah 61:3)
I have recently begun working on removing those masks once and for all. It’s time to burn my masks to ashes in the fire. That’s a process, because they are deeply tangled and I am a fallible human. But I am trying. I want to be free of them. I know there is a better earthly life on the other side of the process. A life where I can walk in freedom knowing that I am eternally protected. Loved. Valuable. God, Himself, has seen to it.
