A Case of Mistaken Identity, Part 2

No Less Than Greatness
by Mary Manin Morrissey

(Page 2 of 2)

How easily we are lured into a false identity. You know those times you tell people, "I'm just not myself today"? With Michael, I felt "not myself" all the time. I didn't know how to be a stepparent - or even if I should be one - so instead, I turned myself into what I thought Michael needed: Mother Nice. In return, Michael, uncertain of his own role and untrusting of this sweet-tempered fianc?e of his father's, worked hard to make himself into someone he believed to be unlovable. When I asked him to clear his plate at dinner, he snarled, "You're not my mother," and went and plopped himself down in front of the TV with a bowl of Cheetos. He refused to do his homework. When Ed or I tried to encourage him to do his assignments, he'd respond that his teachers all thought he was stupid, so what was the point?

It was ten o'clock on a Saturday night a few months before Ed and I were to be married. I was just getting ready for bed when the phone rang. Sunday mornings, I'm up at four o'clock in order to put the finishing touches on my sermon and prepare for the busiest day of the week at church. Michael, now twelve, had been scheduled to spend the weekend with his father, but Ed had gone out of town on business unexpectedly, and I was called in to baby-sit. Naturally, Michael had sought escape as soon as possible and had been spending the evening at a video arcade with friends. He was expected home shortly, so I was surprised to hear his voice on the phone.

"Mary," he said, "I need you to come get me."

Had something happened? A friend's older brother was supervising. He had promised to drive the kids home by ten o'clock.

"I missed my ride," he explained.

"How did that happen?"

In a matter-of-fact voice, with no apology, he explained that his friend's brother had been ready to leave, but he had wanted to stay and finish his video game. "I told them to go because you'd come and get me," he finished.

The arcade was forty-five minutes away. My bathrobe was soft and warm. The comforter beckoned. After dressing and driving to and from the arcade, I wouldn't be back in my flannels until midnight at the earliest, giving me only a few much-needed hours of sleep. Michael knew this. He knew very well I got up at 4 a.m. on Sundays, but the Mary he knew, patience-of-a-saint Mary, who never got mad, who always ignored his insults and sullen attitude, would rush to his side without complaint. Not this time.

"How could you?" I demanded. "You know what time I have to get up in the morning. You were only thinking about yourself, weren't you? You..." and so forth. I was tired and grouchy and let it show.

I stopped, out of breath, and for a time the only noise on the end of the line was the distant hum of the Mario Brothers electronic jingle and an occasional explosion from Power Pete. Finally, Michael spoke up.

"Who are you and what have you done with Mary?" he asked. The Mary he knew would never have lost her temper. He considered the Mary he knew too good to be true - and in fact, he was right. This twelve-year-old, in his own way, had seen through my disguise. I wasn't the wicked stepmother of his imagination, but I wasn't Carol Brady, either. Being grouchy had actually felt quite good.

Clearly, God had just offered me a gift: forty-five minutes on the freeway to figure out the person I intended to be with Michael. What I truly wanted was a great relationship with my future stepson, but I wasn't going to forge that kind of bond by being someone other than my authentic self. In real life, I'm a person who discourages foul language and lackadaisical hygiene in my children. Yet until this moment, I had pretended to accept what had set me seething.

You cannot fake a relationship and feel right with yourself or anyone else. Changing yourself to fit what you think other people want doesn't work. Pretending to be someone other than yourself only broadens the distance between the person you are and the one with whom you're trying to establish closeness.

Ask yourself, "Who am I?" Deep down, I know that I am a child of God who has inherited divine capacities; some of them I strive to develop, others are left languishing. I also have a human side. I lose my temper, lose patience and sometimes judge others and myself. My human side wants everybody to like me and on occasion has contorted my personality to feel more accepted. Those contortions get mighty uncomfortable, until I remember my true divine identity and return to myself.

We are all created in the image of our Creator - Love itself. There's no need to fake a relationship with God, because nothing I do can make my essential self more or less lovable. Why fake my way to closeness with a twelve-year-old boy? We have to be fully ourselves in order to have a fulfilling relationship with anyone else. Getting grouchy or losing patience or calling someone on inappropriate behavior are all part of our human experience. I deeply wanted to love Michael and wanted him to love me, but he sometimes behaved in ways I didn't like. If I couldn't even share that truth with him, what chance did we have?

Copyright © 2001 by Mary Manin Morrissey. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

An ordained minister since 1975, Mary Manin Morrissey is the founder and senior minister of the Living Enrichment Center, in Wilsonville, Oregon, which serves 4,000 people weekly. Her previous book, Building Your Field of Dreams, was adapted for a one-hour PBS special.