do you remember the life size barbie??  and by life sized they really meant 3 feet tall (at age 7 i guess that is the size of life though)  anyway, she was awesome.  i never had one, but a friend of mine did.  we would do her hair, and dress her up, and put make up on her.  and man did we think we were cool.  i even remember walking to walgreens, and buying a disposable camera to take pictures of all of the ways we dressed her up (let me tell you, my mom was not thrilled to develop 35 pictures of life size barbie…).

one day though, for whatever reason, we realized that maybe we could do the same thing, but instead to each other.  i remember taking all the stuff to the basement, so that no one would find us.  we giggled the whole time.  we had 80’s blue eye-shadow, and hooker red lipstick.  we were wearing plastic dress up heals, with velcro dresses pulled over our t-shirts and stir-up pants.  our hair was sticking up in all directions, held in place by pastel butterfly clips and those cheap plastic barrettes with birds and hearts on them.  and as soon as we finished, do you know we wanted to do?  show the world!  we went up to her family, and danced around the living room, making faces and showing off how sweet we looked.  they all laughed, probably because we looked like idiots.  we were laughing too, but more likely because we were thrilled to not just be making up the life we wanted barbie to have, but living it out ourselves.

and guess what?  yep.  you got it.  this reminds me of jesus.  here’s how.

so i was talking to amy today about my life, which is no big surprise.  and i was trying to convey to her the newness i’ve been feeling in my relationship with jesus.  before, it was like i knew all of the awesome stuff about him.  i had gone through and made inventory of all of the possibilities of jesus and how he can affect lives.  i’d even taken the time to step back and look at other peoples situations and see how applying jesus could totally change it.  lately though, i’ve been having my own moments with jesus.  times when i can’t even explain the peace and comfort that have come out of my interactions with him.  needing him, giving him my all, accepting what he says about me.  now, it’s not at all easy.  in fact, looking at other peoples lives and applying is much simpler than trying to do it to myself.

you know, kind of like doing make-up, or hair.  it’s way easier to evenly put eye-shadow on someone else.  or to do the back of your friends hair rather than your own.  and we all know you can’t really tell how your own butt looks in something, which is why you always take a friend shopping.  but just making someone else look cute isn’t nearly as enjoyable.  your head might be sore from the hair style, and your feet tired from shopping, but at the end of the day, it feels so good to be the one who’s all done up.

and at the end of the day, it’s so much better to have experienced life with jesus instead of  just watching it happen in the people around you.  some people might laugh about it, thinking that i’m kind of crazy.  but i’ll be smiling along with them, because it feels so good to put away life size barbie, and love jesus for myself instead.