Given the time and an up-coming event, my friend Amy and I can log some serious miles on the shopping expressway.  We have different tastes but a mutual drive to steer each other toward purchases that will highlight our assets and downplay our trouble areas.  We’ve seen many a dressing room, re-hung many a blouse, and averted many a fashion mishap together.  It’s one of my favorite pastimes, shopping with Amy.  Whether we buy what we’ve tried on, there are always good, belly laughs and usually a meal involved – admirable priorities, if you ask me.

Sometimes, though, because of our schedules, we have to shop like this:

I’ll hear the notification sound on my phone indicating that a text message has come through.  Attached to the message will be a picture and, usually, a three-word message, “yes or no”… I have a katrillion of these pictures.  Some yeses, some nos.  All with that look of concentration as she tries to get her clothing in the picture and still be able to tap the camera button.  And, I don’t know what Amy does with the pictures she sends to me, but the ones I send to her become the standard at which I see myself.  They help me see what I look like. They help me understand what I look like to others.

I write for a myriad of reasons, one of the strongest reasons being that writing helps me process for understanding.  Being able to put into words an outcome or an end point, or a wall that I cannot seem to get over helps form acceptance and concrete contentment and solidifies the hope that there is more than a single circumstance staffolding my purpose in life.

I am, first and foremost, a believer.  A Bible-reader.  A Jesus-follower.  But, I confess:  I’m not very good at being a believer, Bible-reader, or Jesus-follower.  Some days are better than others but most are a comical show of me tripping over myself.  On and off-again, like a bad relationship on trashy television.  And, so I write to find the hope that tomorrow might be better than today.

These blog posts are more for me, in that case, than they are for you. Posts used to point out where God’s Grace is the only reason situations turn out well; posts that highlight my hypocritical nature in what I try to act on from the Bible and what is actually accomplished; posts that make me wonder how God doesn’t just roll His eyes and wash His hands of me, altogether.

But, maybe you’ll find some common ground between us, in these posts.  A mutual nodding of the head that brings us together in our quest to do better, be better.

The idiom, “Like the pot calling the kettle black” illustrates when a person is guilty of the very thing they point out in another.  I anticipate that many of the stories I tell will tag me the pot.  Or the kettle.  Both, being black.  And in desperate need of grace and mercy and reassurance and love.  It seemed an appropriate name for this blog.

The shopping selfies that Amy and I exchange from dressing rooms all over the Metroplex help us see what each other looks like in a particular clothing piece.  May you see these posts as selfies, too, helping you and me see where God has poked His divine intervention, mercy, and grace to make us do better, be better.

As a child, I spent early Saturday mornings watching The Justice League cartoon with my brothers and was appropriately fixated on Wonder Woman.  What’s not to love about a woman who could hang with the boys, who had an invisible mode of transportation and who could force the bad guys to tell the truth with a rope?   Aside from her disproportionate bust to waist to hip ratio (Thanks for the body image complex, DC Comics!), she was a perfect super hero to aspire to be like.

Image borrowed from thanley.wordpress.com.

So, Wonder Woman Underoos made sense.  Underoos.  Remember them?  Underwear and undershirt, prepackaged and pre-printed with whatever cartoon character was popular at the time.  A marketing strategy genius for those children who watched cartoons on Saturday morning, which was ALL children, wasn’t it?  I don’t remember too many particulars about these Underoos, aside from having them, but one memory stands out.  I couldn’t have been more than three.  My parents had guests over, and my Underoos were new.  I made a streaking appearance in these underwear-look-a-likes to show off my Wonder Woman status only to be quickly ushered into my bedroom for a stern talking to about how we do NOT show our underwear to guests.  Hmph. Who knew?

I like the idea of transparency.

I like the idea of being completely honesty in words, actions, and thoughts, day in and day out.  I like the idea of being an open book, keeping my weaknesses and shortcomings and insecurities out in the open so that Satan has less to work with. I like that, in being transparent, I can lay my head down, at night, and sleep in peace and contentment.

I like the idea of transparency.

The action of transparency is often a different story.

Transparency breeds vulnerability.  And vulnerability is scary.  Vulnerability acts as a door into our deepest, darkest secrets – those things we are certain will cause people to run, screaming into the night, away from our terrible selves.  Vulnerability highlights those things we are certain will keep us from sitting at the cool kids’ table at lunch or at church. Vulnerability points to those things that could brand us ‘unlovable’ or ‘unfit’ or ‘unworthy’.

The action of transparency is the hard part.

But, the hard part is necessary.

In order to form healthy, solid, strong bonds with any person, some level of transparency must be achieved.  It is the single most connecting aspect of relationships – relating to someone because of a shared struggle, experience, weakness, or overcoming.

There is a fire inside of me, put there by God, Himself, to blaze a trail toward transparency.  A fire that propels me to place myself, my credibility, my reputation on the line in the name of complete honesty so that healthy, solid, strong bounds can be established so that His work can be accomplished; so that His Kingdom can expand.

Thus the purpose of this blog and the words typed within it.  I have nothing more to offer than a clear view into my life and prayers that you and I will be able to establish a relationship that will further His kingdom.  I do not have all the answers.  In fact, I have very few, as you’ll soon see through this blog.  But, I was given the gift of stringing words together to paint pictures and speak truth.  So, I’ll share.  I’ll be transparent.  I’ll tell you what I’ve been through, what I’m going through, what I aim for.  I’ll lay on the table the things I’m afraid of, the events that bring me joy, the perplexities of my specific circumstances.  All in hopes that His Word will bring clarification, His Will be done, and that we – you and I – will lean in closer to Him.

Looking back, I can understand my parent’s reaction to my Underoo display while we had visiting guests. The inappropriateness was lost on me in my quest to share something I was excited about. Remember, this Wonder Woman-lady had an invisible plane!  But, I envy the willingness I possessed, at age three, to be transparent.  It is not so easily shown these days.

May we posses the willingness to be open; to be transparent; so that others can see the work of God within us.  And, may we have cool pajamas that give us confidence!