Once upon a time a grown and living-away-from-home son wanted his cat to come for a holiday and on the evening of the cats return, the cat chauffer bundled the Houdini cat in her carrier, in a cordon of towels, in a box so it wouldn’t tip, in the rear of the van with a weight on top (all perfectly breathable of course) – and then couldn’t find her keys. Yes… you know it. The cocoon had to be undone and remade once the keys were extricated.
Our identities get layered around a core that needs protecting and when all is well what emerges will be healthy and timely. But when something rancid is sealed inside, or the walls are too thick or made from the wrong fibres the results will not be healthy and reshaping takes place.
Well it can in the identity sense, and if it does it’s good – it’s when we cling to the knownness of sameness we get in the most trouble… It’s when we’re too frightened to look at our structures that more damage can come.
My last five years or so has been a most strenuous reformation of my structure and my core.
My cocoon has consisted of the woven fibres – daughter, wife, mother, friend, Christian, good with my hands, nice to most folks, a bunch of hopes and dreams and goals all laced with a steely wire of determination. But one day God went “Hey Love, you know all that stuff… what if it all went “pffffft!” – do you know who you are without it?”
What if one day there are no more structures… no cocoon fibres. Neither healthy nor rancid, just the core in the middle – and Him.
What then?
When my sense of self isn’t fed into by any of my roles? Surely this isn’t a bad thing – to find a place where I’m neither built nor stripped by the sucess or failure – or passing – of my roles – but just to rest as me.
In Him.
Are your externals getting shaken? If they are, your ‘internals’ are likely to be also. Maybe God wants to pose you the same question… and the beauty of it is that He’ll help us each answer it too.
“Hey Love, you know all that stuff…
– what if it all went “pffffft!” –
do you know who you are without it?”