How You Doin’?

(I’ll give you a minute to digest that and think of Joey and laugh.  You did read it in his voice, right?)

So I was playing around with Facebook and trying to figure it out.  I have been on it awhile and I have a Great Big Yes page but I still don’t know how to work everything.  I’m sure there are lots of cool features that I don’t know about.  It’s kind of like my camera and my washer and my ipad and ATT U-verse and all the other things I use but I’m sure I’m not using to their full potential.  Who has time to read all the paperwork???

Anyway, I’m on Facebook and I never really noticed that in the space where you can post an update, there are words.  There is a question and it changes.  When I realized this, I started clicking on and off, on and off, just to see the question change.  (And I wonder why I don’t have time to read directions).   It’s funny on the Great Big Yes page because it says, “How are you doing, Great big YES?” or “What’s going on, Great Big YES?”

It made me think of a cheer they do at my daughter’s school… They say, “Bulldogs, How do you feel?” and you are supposed to say, “I FEEEEEEL Good, Oh, I feel so good!”

This got me thinking.  What if I don’t feel good?  What if I posted how I really felt some days?  What if I saw, “How are you doing, Great Big YES?” and I typed in, “Great Big YES is a Great Big NO today.  I woke up late, didn’t have food for kid’s lunches, house is a mess, just ate cookies for breakfast and I think I’m going back to bed to watch Channing Tatum movies all day.  Might be depression, might be anxiety, might just be tired and fed up. Check in tomorrow and I’ll let you know if it’s better.”

Does anyone really want to know this?

It’s like the Christmas card.  We put on the highlights, right?  I mean, who wants to hear about the tests you failed, the schools you didn’t get into, the bonus you didn’t get, the flood in your basement and the pervasive feeling that you are a failure?

I mean, really.  Get it together before you show it to the world.

In other words, on Facebook and in Christmas cards…lie.

Today in our faith sharing group, we talked about fear.  FEAR.  It’s big and it’s real and it affects all of us in one way or another.  We talked about how God mentions fear a lot in the Bible and it’s always this, “DO NOT BE AFRAID”.  But we don’t always live that do we?

So the beautiful, freeing thing about talking about something is that when you talk about it, you release it.  It’s out there.

It’s so great when we tell a friend our worries or our fears and we realize we are not alone.  We can share and hear, “I’ve felt that too”.  We can listen and say, “I’ve felt that too”.  We can laugh together and cry together and grow together.

But we can’t do that if we lie.

We can’t do that if we try to keep up the facebook version of life.

I read this and thought, “Oh yeah, that’s so true…”  

And so, in honor of that sentiment, here is our “not perfect” Christmas card.

Happy New Year!

My name is Sue and I’m not perfect.  How you doin’?

©2013 Sue Bidstrup, Great Big Yes™ All Rights Reserved