Growing up one of my favorite movies was The Wizard of Oz. The story of a girl lost in Oz trying desperately to find her way back home. Along the way she makes new friends who are all in search of something. When we think about The Wizard of Oz we think about Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man , the Cowardly Lion, Toto and their quest to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West. To me, there’s another character that speaks so much louder – The Great Wizard himself.
When we are first introduced to the wizard we are lead to believe that he is an all powerful wizard that can solve Dorothy’s problem with a snap of his fingers. When Dorothy and her friends finally make the journey to the Emerald City we discover that the wizard is not at all what he presented himself to be. He is simply a circus magician from Kansas that has convinced an entire kingdom of people that he is something that he is not. Why did Oscar Diggs feel that he needed to pretend to be a powerful wizard? He was a kind man with good intentions and in later novels we learn that he is a creative inventor, he introduces the people of Oz to using money, and eventually is invited to be a permanent resident of Oz. Why was being himself not good enough?
The truth is that I relate to Oscar on so many levels. I think that we all feel like we’re not good enough at some point . This is something that I have battled with most of my life. Struggled with being so ashamed of the person that I was that it was easier to pretend that I was ANYTHING else. I would lie about where I was from, what I did, who my parents were. I felt like every decision I had made in my real life was a bad one. I didn’t grow up in a “normal” family, I was a teenage mother, I got married very young. I didn’t have a fancy job or a full bank account. I quit school. I felt like every decision I had ever made was the wrong one and that made me a failure. I didn’t want other people to see the failure that I saw in myself. I wanted to be someone that people respected and were proud of. The REAL me was nothing to be proud of in my mind.
Only when I fell on my face before God and asked for forgiveness and restoration did I find freedom to be who He created me to be. I have lied to more people than I have been honest with. That’s a staggering realization on my part. Truthfully, I still struggle with my insecurities and my moments of being ashamed of who I WAS. Satan uses that against me at every turn, but I am no longer that girl that would rather be anyone else. I have been made whole and new through Christ.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
2 Corinthians 5:17
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)