Before You're Face Down at the Bottom of the Cage...

Hi Friends,

I'll be sharing this story this week at Juvenile Hall ... about being real, being honest about who and how you are. It's probably time for all of us to tell the truth before we find ourselves face down at the bottom on the cage . . .

Face Down at the Bottom of the Cage

            It was a big, fat lie.  I smiled as I said it.  And what’s worse, I told it in the church foyer.  

            A friend touched my shoulder.  “How’re you doing?”

            “Fine.  Thanks.” 

            She nodded and made her way into the sanctuary.

            Fine.  I’m doing fine.  I’ve told that lie a hundred times, maybe a thousand.  But it was never bigger than that morning.  Two days before I’d found out that the baby I was carrying had died.  And in two days more I was scheduled for surgery to remove the empty egg sac that was still in me.  So, I was not fine. Not at all.

            I wouldn’t have thought twice about my lie except when I came home that day I found one of my lovebirds dead at the bottom of the cage.  I trembled as I backed away and called to my husband.  “Bryan, can you come in here?”

            He walked over and stared at the bird.  “What happened?”

            I shrugged my shoulders.  “I dunno.  It looked fine yesterday.”

            “How did it go from fine to dead in a day?”  Bryan put on a gardening glove, reached in the cage, and removed the dead bird.  “Well, there’s no marks on it.  Feels a little skinny though.  You’d better look in that book we got on lovebirds.”
            I shivered and turned away.  

            “Are you all right?”

            “I’m fine.”  I said the lie again, softer this time, quieter.

            “Fine, huh?”  Bryan put the dead bird in a box, then waited as I retrieved the book about lovebirds and flipped through the pages.  

            I read about various diseases and sick birds.  Then, I stopped and looked up.  “Wow, look at this.”  I pointed to a paragraph in the book.  “It says here that a lovebird will hide its sickness until it’s about to die.  You can’t tell it’s even sick unless you weigh it twice a week.”

            Bryan nodded.  “It’s too bad.  If we’d have known, we could have tried to do something.”  He tossed the book onto the table.  “Too late now, of course.”

            I sank into a chair and stared at the one bird left in the cage.  “If only we’d known . . .”  It was then that my lie came back to me.  Fine.  Thanks.  I was no different than that foolish lovebird.  By instinct, I, too, hid my emotional and spiritual sickness.  Hid it so well that no one would know I needed help.

            Perhaps that’s why the Bible says, “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”  (Ephesians 4:25, NIV)  I’d always thought that verse meant I shouldn’t try to manipulate others with my words.  And it does mean that.  But maybe it also means that I must open myself to fellow believers.  I need to allow them into my life with truth and honesty.  I have to be vulnerable if I am to be healed.  

            And if I’m not, I may find myself, one day soon, face down at the bottom of my cage.