Elmo

I bet you are wondering what in the world I am going to say about Elmo today. Well I am not going to talk about the lovable, ever so red, fuzzy little character on Sesame Street. No. There is another Elmo out there in the world... well at least there is in my world! His name is not really Elmo, but everyone calls him Elmo just the same. Elmo is a part of our Celebrate Recovery leadership team. Often he gets up and says, "Hi. I am Elmo and I have been delivered from Elmo." It is usually met with a round of laughter as is many of the things he says. He has this way about him that is so incredibly unusual that most people do respond with a nervous kind of laughter. He is completely and utterly transparent. That seems to make people nervous. It's like we think he has some sort of magic power. If he is completely transparent, he may expect us to be completely transparent or even worse... he may know that we are not being completely transparent!

I will never forget the first time I heard him speak. He admitted that his grammar wasn't all that great and that he wasn't a great speaker. I can assure you that this English teacher cringed at many of the things that came out of his mouth. I thought, "Oh my. Perhaps he would be open to us sitting down and tweaking his grammar skills just a bit." I even offered to help him. I just knew he would want to improve those skills since he had began his spill with the admittance of his rusty grammar skills. Well, much to my dismay, he wasn't interested. He said he wasn't much on that school stuff. I shook my head and decided that this was in fact the real Elmo and anything else just would not be as effective. He is a no holds barred kind of guy. If it pops in his shiny head then most likely it has already popped out of his mouth.

The one thing that I find so wonderfully refreshing at Celebrate Recovery is that there really aren't that many people wearing masks. Its all just right out there in the open. We talk about those things we have done in our lives that we are SO not proud of and we stand in awe that the Lord delivered us out of those pits! Everyone literally comes just as they are and God is there every time. He loves us just as we are, so shouldn't we love others just as they are? He came to live a life as an example of how we should strive to live. He always met people where they were, right there in their mess, and he lovingly called them to God. He urged them to turn away from their life of sin and follow Him. He surely wasn't trying to correct their grammar or help them state their seemingly possibly offensive story in a more politically correct way that would be potentially less offensive. Oh if only I could be more like Jesus and see the beautiful person that He sees when He looks at His children... make it so Lord... make it so...
Much Love,
Christie