Honest about our puffy feet

My parents are visiting from Ohio this week and today I took them up to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks. It was a beautiful but long trip. In the quiet and tired moments on the way home, I began to think of, for no reason other than my random, tired mind, a substitute teacher that I once had in elementary school.

The woman was average height and thinning black hair, but by far the most fascinating aspect of her was her feet. I still remember the first day we met her. Our teacher was going to be gone for a week or two and she was coming in to take over. We all immediately became fixated on her feet. Some of us knew we shouldn't stare, but no one could resist. They were puffy feet--they swelled up and out of her shoes. She wore a dress flat with a fairly open top and her foot just billowed out of that open shoe like it was the top of a muffin.

I remember thinking we might get in trouble for staring, but she shocked us all when she started class. The first thing out of her mouth, after her name, was, "And most people are curious about my feet." She spent the next few minutes explaining that her feet were swollen and nobody really knew why. And then she fielded the barrage of questions from the inquisitors we were as elementary students. No, they didn't hurt. Yes she did have trouble finding just the right shoe. No, it didn't feel like a water balloon you could pop, but was rather firm.

Now I don't know much about this woman today, but what struck me as amazing as I was recalling that event was her simple acceptance of herself. She was not caught up in all the image games we tend to play. She had puffy feet, and that was that. She didn't hide them or make excuses for them. She didn't change the subject whenever someone brought it up. Instead, she bravely and honestly explained her puffy feet to a bunch of first graders. She demystified the whole thing, and we came, rather quickly, to accept her puffy feet as a welcome visitor in our classroom.

What would the world be like if we could all just live honestly with our own puffy feet? What if we weren't so concerned about image, but rather just accepted ourselves and presented ourselves honestly to others? What if we just admitted that our hair wasn't perfect, or our smile was crooked, or that our skin was in full mutiny to our wishes? What if we could be honest about that fact that we were uncomfortable with our weight, or worried that we aren't athletic enough?

And as amazing as that would be, I'm really wondering, what if those in the community of believers would just be honest about our spiritual, emotional, and character puffy feet? What if we could just admit that we weren't doing "OK"? What if we talked honestly about the things that plagued us? What if we named the sins that continually knocked us down? What if the Church was the safest place to share these things? See, unlike physical puffy feet, these things can be healed in community.

Protecting images is destroying community.