the end of the masquerade

One of my favorite movies - possible the favorite movie - is Ever After. If you have not seen it, I would highly recommend it. A "real life" Cinderella story, complete with masked ball... does it get better than that? Oh, yes, it does. There are gypsies and a swordfight. (And those of you who love this movie as much as I do are reliving the best scene right now.) The rest of you need to go rent it. Yes, it's a chick flick. And their French is terrible. But it's a good story. And did I mention there's a swordfight? (Cinderella wins.)

So there's a scene towards the end of the movie where Cinderella goes to the Masque - the ball the King is throwing to celebrate the engagement of his son to ... no one knows whom. The prince and Cinderella have fallen in love, but she can't marry him under false pretenses, so Cinderella goes to tell him the truth about who she is - and the conversation goes horribly wrong. He isn't listening to her, and she's betrayed by her family in front of the entire court before she has the opportunity to explain the real masquerade that their relationship has been up to this point. He is understandably upset, and allows his pride to overshadow his love for the girl... they do patch it up and live happily ever after eventually, but it takes them awhile to get there, and it's pretty awful in betweentimes...

I've been thinking about that whole masquerade thing all week. A friend of mine, when I told him about that dream I had last week, basically said, "Hap, don't read more into it than is there, but look at the message - you're afraid of the consequences of being seen for who you really are. Your whole life you've played so many roles based on the expectations (or perceived expectations) that have been placed upon you. Over the past year, you've done a lot to step out of that masquerade and to just be yourself - but since you've been burned in the past for it, of course you're starting to fear that it will happen again." (He said it all a lot better than that, and I am kicking myself for not writing it down earlier.) He had a point. And, I suspect, a direct line to heaven on that one. There's a lot of truth to that, and I run up against it in the oddest places sometimes.

Tomorrow my friend Stephie is preaching on fasting, and she's interviewing me and another friend of ours about our experiences fasting. I'm glad she asked because it is a discipline that I really love (I know that sounds funny, considering prior things I've written about that, but God has so changed my heart about it), and the opportunity to make the discipline of fasting personal to someone (as in, "Oh, well, this person I know has managed to fast, and this is how it went, so maybe I can too...") is exciting - but there's also this weird zone attached to it that I am really wrestling with...

The two passages I come back to over and over again on fasting are Isaiah 58 and Matthew 6: 16-18. I've written a couple of times about Isaiah 58 and how significant that passage has been to me. But I'm suddenly finding that actually standing up in front of people and talking about it is really hard! Fasting is such a personal and private thing, and the things for which I have been fasting and praying this year are so intensely personal - and I'm just not sure how to talk about it and still be vague enough to guard my privacy yet truthful enough to communicate that there are actual situations in which this discipline has proven effective - how to talk about how sweet it is to throw yourself in the gap for someone you love who needs God to intervene on their behalf and to let your hunger drive you to a deeper hunger for the Lord and for His kingdom to come... without actually explaining the situations themselves. How to talk about Isaiah 58 when God continues to use it to change everything... And I'm being vague....

It is simply that in learning to say Kaddish this year, I have discovered that part of God's purpose in calling to me to fast the way I do is to "loose the chains of injustice" over my life... and that "not turning away from my own flesh and blood" (Isaiah 58:7) isn't just about the past but about the future too - and that "the glory of the Lord" being "my rear guard" means that God's got my back and that He can redeem my past to help others become free - but that in order to do that, He needs me to tell the truth - the whole truth - about me. My story. Everything. Probably not all at once...lol. But bit by bit. And while blogging has done so much over the past two years to help me start doing that... the call is to people I can see as well as those of you who are kind enough to read these ramblings...

So I guess it's time to break character...? Tomorrow will be interesting anyway. (insert wry grin here) I wonder what I'll actually say...

...and am hoping for a happy ending. Pun so absolutely intended.