"What is your favorite color?"
It was such a common, innocent question, but it struck a twinge of fear in my small heart. While the other children spouted off their favorite hues, I felt a bit dumbstruck and so very indecisive.
I understand this fear now more than I did as a child. Picking a favorite color might mean I would deny myself the others. If I picked the deep red of the bricks arranged in stars on our barn, I might lose the vibrant blues of my field hockey uniform or my latest dance costume. But if I chose blue, I might sacrifice the breathlessness of the brilliant mountain fall oranges.
Colors speak about a person, about their loves, their temperaments. I couldn't chose easily between parts of myself.
I've felt this pressure again recently, the need to pick a favorite. It is scarier this time, paralyzing even. And it's coming from my own mind and heart as much as I hear or read it elsewhere.
It is the unforgiving pressure to categorize myself, to pick a favorite color and wear it exclusively. The dichotomies are haunting: mother or doctor, artist or scientist, runner or cook, farmer or gypsy, humanitarian or theologian. I must decide on my label and sacrifice my duplicity to the god of predictability. I stand, quaking in the fear of a wrong decision.
But this pressure, this voice, is not the G-d I know. The G-d I know is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of G-d, a king who became poor infant, walked on earth and ascended to heaven.
These rich and interesting dichotomies seems inherent in the G-d I know.
So in light of G-d's character, I relieve myself of the pressure of unmercifully squeezing my whole self into a monochromatic mold. My fearful quaking ceases. Like Noah, I relax into the grace of the rainbow.
May I continue to seek G-d's wisdom, asking to recognize the colors of this season without losing slight of the full array of G-d's colorfulness.
