Matryoshkas

We had neighbors over for dinner last night and their little girl had fun playing with my Matryoshka dolls given to me by a friend several years ago. You may know them better as Russian nesting dolls or Babushka dolls. They are wooden painted dolls, hollow inside except for the last one, and they get smaller and smaller as you open them to reveal the next size. Ultimately there is a tiny little peanut of a doll hiding at the interior of all the dolls, painted as creatively and delicately as her larger counterparts.

My young friend and I entertained ourselves by hiding the littlest doll under one of the halves of the larger dolls and having the other guess her location, like a street scammer in New York City. We had several variations of the game: you only get three guesses (there were eight possible halves to choose from), you have to close your eyes while the other hides the doll, etc. Then the game turned into creative ways to stack the doll halves, all the while featuring the tiniest doll prominently in our display.

This got me thinking about some of the ways we play games with other people and with God in an effort to hide or highlight our truest selves. Sometimes we want to present ourselves as being bigger and stronger than we really are, concealing our weaknesses or vulnerable areas from others and presenting a decoy of ourselves, detracting attention from who we really are. At other times, we may creatively arrange our circumstances to put our best features in the most favorable light, in essence screaming, “Look at me! Look at me!”

It’s a challenge on one level to present a healthy version of ourselves to people we trust. It takes time and energy to determine which people in our lives are safe to be real with. That’s a good thing. Not everyone gets the most intimate access to my heart. But everyone deserves to see something real.

The ironic part of the game we play in life is that we think we can do it with God. The One who knit us together in our mother’s womb, knows the hairs on our heads, and discerns our thoughts and words before we even know them ourselves. (Psalm 139: 13, Matthew 10:30, Psalm 139:4) He may smile as we play the game sometimes, but He always knows the whereabouts of the most fragile and precious parts of ourselves that we think we can ignore or hide.

Sometimes I wonder if I even know that little peanut well enough to display it to others. Am I a stranger to myself? Am I living in denial of my true value or my detrimental flaws? How much effort am I willing to give to hiding and presenting a selective version of myself?

I want to be authentic in all things as a result of having heard from my Father who I am and what I was created for. That requires the discipline of silence and stillness, which I am far from mastering. I want to be still and know that He is God, because everything else in life flows from that knowledge. And only with that realization can I even begin to know who I am and be real.