Valerie Rae Hanneman
Jeremiah 20:14 “Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!”
Jeremiah 20:18 “Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?”
I didn’t start taking drugs intending to be a drug addict. I was just in it for the party - just like my friends. I would control the drugs - they would never control me. At first the drugs were great! I was just a recreational drug user using them only when I was going out to party. They helped me overcome my shyness, put me more in control of what was going on around me, made me more energetic and less inhibited. When I was high I felt powerful and valued - everything I had always wanted to be, but wasn’t. Then I started taking them on Saturday morning - just to get me going on my housework - after all - I had been out partying late the night before. I just needed a bit of help - besides with my house so clean I felt in control of the homefront as well as the party scene. Then it was just a little bit to get me going on Monday morning - just to get my work week jump-started after the weekend. They helped me feel in control at work. Only then on Tuesday I started taking a little more, then it was a little bit more, and a little bit more and a little bit more, until it was several times each and every day. I was drinking half-a-bottle of Ny-Quil every few nights just to get some sleep. My bills were not getting paid, my children were eating macaroni & cheese night after night because I had a $200.00 a week drug monster within me. And when it stirred - it had to be fed. I wasn’t happy on the drugs anymore, I wasn’t in control, I wasn’t the woman that I thought I wanted to be, I wasn’t anything. I was so miserable that I wanted to die and only my children kept me from killing myself. I felt so dead inside, I was afraid that my life would be one long never-ending drug hell.
But nobody in the “real” world knew it. I wore a plastic face of “normal” and nobody knew that behind that plastic face was the reality of a life that was one long scream of despair.
Elvis Presley was born “dirt-poor” in Tupelo, Mississippi then rose to the pinnacle of music as the “King of Rock & Roll” with all the fame, money and power that was possible for him to have. To anyone looking at him he appeared to have it all - a charmed life. One reporter asked him during an interview, “Elvis, you have more than you ever dreamed of....are you happy?” And in a rare moment, Elvis replied truthfully, “No, I am not happy.” Shortly after this interview Elvis Presley died and the world discovered that the plastic face he showed the world hid the broken man who died alone of depression and an addiction to pain killers. He had everything the world could offer, but it wasn’t enough. All the painkillers in the world were not enough to kill the pain of the empty places within him.
It makes me wonder how many plastic faces there are among the people that I know. The friend who laughs about how easily she bruises and how clumsy she is. Another who looks away just a smidgen to fast when asked about their children. The guy on the elevator whose big smile doesn’t quite cover the bleakness of his eyes. Every day we live among and work with people who, on the outside, look like they have everything all together. But the simple truth is that we seldom look past the plastic face that disguises the empty place within them. We do not see the pain and hopelessness that is in their lives.
They need Jesus.
Just like I needed Jesus. Only Jesus could take the scream of pain that was my life and turn it into a song of joy. Only He could give me peace, only He could give me a reason to want to live. Only He could give me a hope for the future. Only in His presence could I discover the woman that I was always meant to be. Only He could turn my plastic face into a real face by filling up the empty places inside of me.
The only cure for a plastic face and an empty space is Jesus.
But how will they ever know - if we don’t tell them?
There are a multitude of personal troubles that a person can hide behind a plastic face, but if they don’t know Jesus then the emptiest space inside of them is the space that only Jesus can fill. And once that space is filled by Him, then the rest of the personal problems become manageable within Him.
But we have to tell them about how Jesus can fill the emptiness within them. When Jesus told His followers, “Go into all the world...” He told us that not only are we His best plan to reach the world, we are His only plan.
The friend who laughs to easily, that looks away to quickly or whose smile doesn’t quite reach their eyes are desperately hiding behind plastic faces - waiting for us to show them how Jesus can make them real.
Let’s not turn away from them.
LORD Jesus, use us as Your hands and feet to reach a world that does not yet know that You are the only answer for the emptiness inside. You turn plastic into flesh, You fill the empty places.
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Posted by Valerie at November 12, 2004 08:10 PM