4 minute read
When I was in fourth grade, I dressed up like an old man for Halloween.
The week before, I’d found an incredible old man mask at the store around which I built the costume. That mask was pretty darn lifelike for a kid’s Halloween trinket. It had sags below the eyes, wrinkles around the mouth hole, a ring of fake white hair, and a chrome dome on top. I couldn’t wait to dress up that year.
Back then, we got to wear our costumes to school and wear them all day—because, really, what could be less distracting when you’re settling in for a long day of learning than 20 of your closest friends dressed like Papa Smurf, Princess Leia, and Schneider from One Day at a Time?
The night before Halloween, I put my costume together, building around the old man mask.
Mom found me an old sports coat which, because it was about 57 times too big, made me look slump-shouldered and frail. Perfect.
We also grabbed an old pipe and stuffed it through the tiny slit that served as the old man mask’s mouth and I held it between my teeth. (It’s stunning to me I was allowed to sit at my desk at school and do long division with a pipe hanging out of my mouth.)
That night, checking my look in the mirror, I realized the costume wasn’t complete. I needed something else. So…
I dug through my dad’s junk drawer and found a discarded pair of his prescription eyeglasses. I put them on over the mask.
Suddenly, the costume came to life. I no longer looked like Jeff Davenport, mild-mannered Fourth Grader at Tomahawk Elementary. I looked like Harry Caray’s uncle after a long day selling floor wax door-to-door. I loved it.
But what should’ve been a full day of Halloween glory turned into a long slog of pain and misery.
Those glasses killed my eyes.
They were real-deal prescription glasses. My dad has pretty bad astigmatism so those glasses jacked up everything I saw… and how my brain tried to see them. It was painful.
Now, as a kid, the first rule of Halloween costumes is “Commit and stay committed.” You can’t be the kid who shows up at school in a fun costume, but then starts to peel away parts of it because it’s uncomfortable or you’re bored being The Hulk or an Ewok or The Princess Girl from Never-ending Story. You came dressed like the guy from Krull? You stay dressed up like the guy from Krull.
But, boy, my dad’s old glasses were killing me.
Because they caused my vision to go completely blurry, I kept tripping over my own feet and almost running into people and walls. Reading the chalkboard was a laughable visual experiment. And the headache those things caused kicked in before the “Let’s all start learning right NOW” bell rang to start the day at 8:00am.
I wasn’t about to give up, though. I kept those silly glasses on as long as I could. Enduring the pain, pushing through the discomfort, staying committed to playing a warble-voiced octogenarian as long as I could.
That lasted until 8:10am. Then, the glasses came off.
Sigh.
When I took those glasses off, I was sure everyone in my class was thinking, “Jeff?! That was you?! We thought someone’s grandfather had come to visit the class! Now, without those glasses, we realize the whole thing was a facade. A ruse. A mask and your father’s plaid coat. What a shame! If only you’d kept those glasses on we would’ve remained convinced. I guess the Best Costume Award is going to have to go to Ryan Pitts and Eric Bevin who coordinated their outfits to look like the titular characters, Simon and Simon, from the hit CBS show.”
Dang!
But I had to take those glasses off. They were distorting my view of reality and causing me serious pain. So, even though it cost me something, I knew I had to get rid of them.
*****
My dad’s old glasses were like a bad mindset.
A mindset is just a way of looking at the world, interpreting it, others, and ourselves.
A good mindset is calibrated according to whatever is True.
A bad mindset is calibrated according to whatever is False.
It’s almost impossible for God to partner with us and grow good things in our lives if we have a bad mindset.
A bad mindset could be looking at the world and thinking it owes you something.
A bad mindset could be looking at people who’ve hurt you and believing that until they’ve jumped through your hoops, you can’t forgive them.
A bad mindset could be thinking about yourself as someone who can never really change, never really grow, never really do great things.
A bad mindset could be considering God to be an ogre, a bully, a slave-master.
A bad mindset could be seeing the Bible as a book designed to destroy you, not show you a path to goodness, relational health, and joy because it’s written by the Creator of, well, Everything.
There are a host of bad mindsets that are common with people of all walks of life.
We have to recognize what bad mindsets are at work within us…
And we have to see how destructive they are. How they warp our view of the world (like my dad’s old glasses made me see the world like it was a live Dali painting).
And we have to choose—today—to start to take those mindsets off.
*****
That Halloween day, only when I took my glasses off could I see what was going on around me, grow and learn, and even have fun.
What can you do, today, to disagree with a bad mindset, choose to agree with God’s good mindsets, and walk towards goodness and freedom?
It’s time to take those wrong glasses off.