A Caterpillar's Question

"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.

Being told all your life to be yourself can be restricting.  Who am I?

I am only too eager to be different, if what I think I am is my identity.  I want to be smarter, wiser, more open, more gracious, always more of what I deem good and less of what I deem bad.  Less private, less awkward, less uncomfortable.  By some God-ordained miracle I escaped from the too common obsession with beauty of a physical and even sexual nature~what could I do about a flyaway shock of red hair and large hands anyway?  Inner beauty is what I have been told to value~goodness, truth, intelligence~and value it I have, to the detriment of all else more grace-filled.

Because of course, constant reminders of inner beauty reminds a young heart that she is filled only with the ugly.  Don't look.  Too dark for holy eyes to see.  "Confidence is the sign of a Godly woman," I heard sharp voices declare, ignorant of the shrinking girl at the edge of the circle.  Already fearful of letting others see, that giveaway lack of confidence grew exponentially, a cloud of anxiety darkening above a young soul.

"You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously.  "Who are you?"

Who are you? Asked a wise, drugged up caterpillar of a confused girl.  The same caterpillar, this time dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt and carrying books of systematic theology.
Who are you?

Not good enough.
Not smart enough.
Not wise enough.

We fight a battle, not against the innocent others who speak thoughtlessly, but against the merciless, grinning forces of evil who take careless words and spin tales of such worthlessness that battle after battle in this bloody war is lost at a single withering glance.

I seem doomed to failure.  The flaming arrows have for so long pierced my thin faith that I know unmistakably my own wretched ignorance in all that I most wish to be most knowledgeable.  Words continue to come slowly when I most wish for the articulation and clarity to communicate my own thoughts.
Who are you?

Not smart enough.
Not wise enough.
Not good enough.

I don't know how to step outside of my own viewed incompetency into a better understanding of my own skills.  I try to show people what I see and am only frustrated by their dismissal of my sight as warped.  But what is true.  Who am I.  Why do I not understand the truth from outside of myself that others claim to know?
Who are you?

Not wise enough.
Not good enough.
Not smart enough.

Wrestling with my inadequacy makes my shame ever more tangible.  Where is the confident woman of inner beauty who I am supposed to represent?  This fearful specter of some Victorian imagination haunts me with her gentle smile and perfect poise.  She understands the philosophies of ages past, recites all the grandest poetry, argues ever graciously her perfect opinion with easy clarity, and I hate her.  I hate this creature who stands by my elbow wherever I go and corrects my reality with her own falsehood.

Who am I?  Flesh and blood, faulty, hilariously real.  A sinner, bought with Son.  Entirely bought.  No longer slave to mortality and frail faith.

Who am I, asks Valjean in a far grander melody than my own.  Who are you, asks the Caterpillar with obvious scorn.

Who am I?
Not good enough.  Imperfect.  Faulty, but covered in faultless blood.  Once dead, but now alive by Grace alone (around which all other things orbit). I am holy who by her own power is only the chief among sinners.  I stand before all my imagined juries of disapproval and judgment with the grace to be brought to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Keep smoking that hookah, Caterpillar.  Keep reciting your classifications and sage advice, flannel shirted one.  Keep pursuing that inner beauty, you sharp but womanly tongues.

I wear the righteousness of Christ.