"Sacrifice" and the art of being yourself

Naples is both completely beautiful and absolutely filthy. There is trash everywhere, and then you look up, and there’s Mt. Vesuvius, standing firm and lovely and always reminding you that in its beauty, it was also once deadly, for just on the other side of the mountain lie the ruins of Pompei. Naples is the perfect, most vivid illustration possible of the two sides that exist to every coin. It’s like a caricature, really, with certain elements exaggerated to really make them stand out. The vineyards, the lakes, the mountains, the sunsets – everything natural is breathtakingly gorgeous. But the buildings, the streets, the graffiti and the trash make the place look like some Eastern European communist leader came in and built it, was convinced to paint everything in pastels, and then left it to fend for itself during a war. And now, years later, he still has not returned to clean up the debris, so life was simply built on top of it.

When we drive around sometimes, I see these buildings, and I can’t tell whether they are inhabitable or not. They look like everything in them was burned out at some point, and now they’re just shells of buildings, but then I’ll notice that there are clotheslines on the balconies, so people must be living there. Then there are buildings that actually are completely empty. They were never finished, in fact, because apparently the builders began building without the proper permits, but instead of destroying the structure once construction was shut down, they were just left there, half-finished.

I live in a really nice area. The houses are big and completely secure, and most of them are in parcos, which are sort of like loosely guarded gated neighborhoods. And yet, outside of our gate, there is graffiti all over the walls. It’s not violent or gang-related at all. Several of the messages are of love and romantic desire (very Italian, no?), but still, it’s there. It’s not even artistic graffiti. It’s just crudely spray-painted graffiti.

And as much as I dislike the trash and graffiti and bad roads and inconsiderate drivers everywhere, I really sort of admire the Neapolitans for their ability and willingness to just be exactly who they are. They don’t try to cover up their problems or relegate them to certain areas of the city. They don’t try to keep the touristy parts clean and just forget about the rest. The whole place just is what it is, and the people are who they are, and you can take it or leave it.

I want to be more like that, if not with other people, then at least with God. I mean it’s not like He doesn’t know me completely already, but I find sometimes that when I am journaling, I’m censoring myself. I might say it’s because I don’t want someone else to read it, but there’s plenty of stuff in there I don’t want people to read, so what’s a bit more? The truth is I’m trying to hide it from myself because if I don’t acknowledge it, then it’s not really a part of me, and I don’t have to deal with it. That’s what I think anyway.

But when I do acknowledge the sin in my life, it provides God with an opportunity to remind me that it’s not really a part of me, that He has made me perfect already, that He has already dealt with it, and that all I have to do is live without it. Is it really even a sacrifice to give up something you didn’t want to claim as your own anyway?