Parents, you remember high school, right?
I don’t know about you but I have a ton of regrets from high school. Most of them because I lacked integrity. Integrity, which by the way has the same root word as integer, means showing consistency and wholeness in your ethical stance, rather than being divided by conflicting values or hidden motives. As an integer is whole, undivided, so a person of integrity is undivided in character.
It is hard being a person of integrity in high school. Everyone just wants to fit in and be liked… or at least not be disliked. So people tend to find masks to wear, different behaviors and identities, based on various environments and people. Constantly adjusting ourselves in order to fit in with others.
If we’re not careful, we can bring those same bad habits with us into adulthood and through the rest of our lives, continually switching masks wherever we are so that other people will accept us and like us or at least not dislike us.
But be aware, your kids are watching. They are watching whether you are a person of integrity or not. If you’re a different human being at home and at work and at church and with your buddies at the basketball game.
This past weekend was the high school retreat. The theme was Unmasked and students spent the entire weekend talking about the masks that we put on that hide what’s really going on on the inside.
It’s never too late to hear the message that our students heard this weekend. Be unmasked. Take off the masks that we wear and just learn to be the real you.
This can be a scary proposition: To remove all your masks and look in the mirror. Maybe you won’t like what you see there.
The great news is that’s what the Holy Spirit is for. He is our helper, meant to form us into the image of Christ. Miraculously, as we interact with the word of God and obey what it says, His power makes us look more and more like Jesus every day..
So let’s join the High School students and be Unmasked!
“But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer who works—this person will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:22-25).