Is the YOU your family sees the same as the YOU the church people and others see?

Recently Facebook has been flooded with all sorts of tests that you can take.  What 80’s song are you?  What Bible character are you?  What type of food are you?  What dog breed are you?  How organized are you?  (stayed far away from that one!).  What’s your TRUE personality?  Who are you when no ones looking? And taking it a step further, who are we when only our family is looking?  Ahhh, there’s one worth talking about .  Or is it?  That question has always been one that I ask myself. 

I’ve worked with many teenagers that tell me that the parents that we see at church are certainly not the ones they see at home.  They say things like, “if you only know the Jekyll and Hyde that I see.”  Many women I worked with long to be the same, consistent person daily.  They desire the “what you see is what you get” character.   Being a pastor’s wife and living in parsonages near the church I really tried to be the same at home as I was at church.  If I’m to be honest I will tell you that that did not always happen.  My children even joke about some of the “quick changes” that I did from crazy, yelling mom to church lady. Not my finest of moments.

I recall one day when my kids were small,  (okay, probably more than one day), when I had raised my voice to where the walls were shaking.  Let’s just be frank, I was yelling and there was nothing nice about my tone of voice. Then there was the ring of the phone and I answered with the sweetest of pastor wives hellos that you could ever imagine (while still silently yelling and pointing my fingers at my kids to get doing what they should be doing).  I was the great multi-tasker.  I was sweet church lady on the phone and silent raging, finger-wagging mom where no one but my kids could see.  I think when I got off of the phone my husband just looked at me like, “wow, that was interesting exchange.”  I knew it was bad and I had been caught. 

Many of you will know this one.  Sunday morning, everyone is running late and mom has to get everyone moving in quick time.  What better than a good Sunday scream fest to get them all in gear right?  As a pastoral family this scenario happened to us many of times.  I would gripe and complain and yell all the way to church. If no one were around I’d even continue it walking up to the church doors.  The second I walked in with my family I would see a parishioner and I would shake their hand or hug them and say, “oh Mary, how are you today? God bless you and I sure hope you have a wonderful week bathed in Gods love.”  The whole time my family stands behind me fingers in throat gagging at my sickly sweet words that never got to them that day. 

So who are we when no one is looking?  Or when it’s only our family looking and no one else?  In my case I’ve had to admit that it’s not always been good.  However, my goal has always been “what you see is what you get.”  I so desire to be the same at home, at church, in the grocery store, on the mission field, etc…  It’s gotten better through out the years as I have consciously made an effort to have that constant integrity in my life.  I’m far from perfect and if you walk up to my house and knock on the door you just may hear me yelling at my dog or complaining about something. 

People all around us are looking for Christians that are real; Christians that are imperfect but live a life of integrity.  Is that you?  Or are you the Jekyll and Hyde that confuses someone that is trying to figure out what being Christ like is all about?  I’ll admit that I’ve not always been the finest of examples when I become crazy wife or mom but you learn to muddle through those times, ask for forgiveness, grow from them and move on towards a life of being that consistent you that you have always dreamt that we would be.  Let’s start 2015 with not another resolution that gets lost in the shuffle but with a goal to be the same for our families as we are for the rest of the world.