I recently read a children’s story about a boy with such a full head of read hair, they called him Moppy. His floppy head of hair was recognized all over town and he loved his unruly red locks.
Some days he would act like a lion and roar, or swing through the trees like a monkey with his wild mop of hair. He loved his hair and loved how it made him look wild.
Never did he consider getting his wild mop cut! He was Moppy, afterall.
One day, Moppy found himself hiding behind a barrel of mops in a grocery store. He was hiding there because his mother had send him to get his hair cut in preparation for his birthday party. He was hoping to escape going to the barber shop which was right next door.
Pouting and spouting all the reasons why he didn’t need to get his mop trimmed, he took refuge behind the barrel. A barrel full of red mops!
As he pouted an old woman without her glasses came up and grabbed his fluffy mop top thinking it was just the perfect mop to clean her kitchen floors with, nice and fluffy!
Aghast, Moppy yelled, “I’m not a mop, I’m a boy!” He escaped the grasp of the old lady and scrambled right into the chair of the barber next door. Afterall, he was a boy, and his real name was Marty, not Moppy!
I retell this story with something in mind.
Sometimes, we are living a story with our lives we never meant to live. Oddly, like Moppy, it takes something like someone grabbing us by our mop top and shaking us to the realization we are not what we meant to become. We awake from our stupor and realize, “Wow, what story have I been living?”
We meant to be a loving, attentive husband or a wise and supportive wife. We meant to be bold and follow our convictions or become the artist, the writer, or basketball player. We meant to take precious time and spend it with our spouses or children. We meant to help our neighbor and care for the orphan. We meant to laugh and enjoy our life.
But, we got caught up in another story. And, it isn’t the story we wanted to live; it isn’t the story we wanted to tell. In our story, we wanted to be brave, compassionate, and courageous. We wanted to take risks and, well, save the girl. We wanted to fall in love and stay in love.
Sometimes we tell ourselves we are living one story while we are actually living another. The amazing thing is we have the ability to edit our own stories and write the next chapter. We have the ability to get our own mop top cut off and become the person we really wanted to be.
Question: Is the story you are writing with your life the story you intended to tell?
