I was listening to a version of “You Don’t Know Me’ performed by Norah Jones (I still like the Ray Charles version. I kick my music pretty old school anyways) and I started listening to the words. The song goes on and on about how the person feels a certain way, but they never show it. Thus, “You Don’t Know Me”

I have heard it out of other people’s mouths when they complain about a soured relationship. “Well, they just never knew me. Not the REAL me.”

*bangs palm against forehead*

Friends….WHY did they never know you? Who were you showing them? How did you possibly think anything was going to work if you weren’t even being YOU? Why are we convinced that we need to censor ourselves.

I talked with a few friends about this and the resounding response is that if we showed everyone the REAL us and they rejected us it would be much more painful. So we keep little bits of ourselves squirreled away to protect who we really are. That way when there is rejection, we get to crawl in our closets with our gallon of ice cream on the phone with our best friend and cry out “He/She just didn’t really know me.”

Consoling ourselves that if they had known the REAL us; they would have loved us. So just a portion of us was rejected in our minds. Right?

Do you realize that you are the one doing the rejecting, not the other way around?

You have decided that this person/this relationship isn’t worth being the real you. It’s not deserving of your 100%. What if you were to go apply for a job and leave half the application blank? In order to find out if you are a fit for the job, wouldn’t they ask for it to be full? Instead we leave alot of the real important stuff out and they shake our head when they don’t hire us. Does that even make sense?

Let me sidetrack just a moment….

Sundays we have been studying Jonah. The guy swallowed by a fish. He did everything he could to get away from what God wanted him to do. He thumbed a donkey South when he was asked to go North and when that wasn’t far enough, he jumped on a boat to get a little farther. The end result? Hanging out for 3 days inside fish entrails until he was puked up on the beach where he has began. Despite his rejections and flat out yelling to God “Dude..I am so out of here!! This isn’t the real me. I don’t wanna!” He ended up being brought back to where he was and God asked him to do it a second time.

Now to my point…

If a puked up, slimy, fish smelling dude was still accepted and seen as valuable when God knew his 100% mess ups and successes…what about us? What’s the worst that’s going to happen? (OK…yes being stuck inside an underwater creature sleeping on digested food would definitely not rank on my things I want to endure in a relationship) We screw up and He brings us right back where we started and says “OK…let’s try this again.”

What if we did this in relationships around us. We give them our 100% successes and failures. We allow them to see the REAL us. Sure there are some who aren’t going to accept us…that’s life with humans…but do we really want to pass up an awesome opportunity at a meaningful relationship with a real person? Or do something that we were really meant to do? So we screw up sometimes. Isn’t that just another chance to land back on the beach smelling of fish and say…”OK…let’s try this again.”

We don’t get anywhere worth being there if we don’t step into 100%. Going to a carnival is no fun if you don’t 100% go. You don’t get to taste the cotton candy or ride the rides. You might get a little green sometimes, but it beats hanging out behind the chain link and not being able to fully experience it.

Take a chance and be the real you. Don’t be the person wallowing in self appointed rejection because the person you cared for never saw the real you. That would be your fault, not theirs. Striking out the whole fish guts incident…what’s the worst that could happen?

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