In the Frame

Sunday morning, I was standing behind the camera in the tech booth, watching the service through the little screen in front of me. When Pastor Isaac invited Cody Tupper to come up and share his testimony, I kept the camera shot wide. That was partly because it was the right shot for the moment, but I also made a deliberate choice to keep Pastor Isaac in the frame with him.


Cody is only a little over 130 days into a very different life. He stood in front of our church and spoke openly about struggles with substance abuse and mental health. He talked about the things he had allowed to take the highest place in his life, the idols that had been leading him for years, and the pain and destruction they had caused, not just for him, but for his family and his community.

And now he was standing in front of us, talking about what God had been doing.

As I watched him through that little screen, I kept thinking about the fact that this is new. This matters. He shouldn't have to stand here by himself.

Cody talked about being blessed to have been raised by good people and surrounded by good people.

Then he told us about how he ended up at a Bible study at the sale barn.

His mom told him that Jim Thompson and Mark Thiel were meeting there for Bible study. At first, he couldn't believe it. A Bible study at the sale barn?

But he went.

He talked about how, after years of letting the wrong things lead him, he began to see the people and circumstances around him differently. Maybe they weren't coincidences after all.

"There's no coincidences," he told us. "I've been saved so many times that there's no way it's a coincidence."

Then he asked the question that stuck with me.

"Is it odd or is it God?"

He stood there with a little over 130 days behind him, grateful simply to be able to stand in front of a church and tell his story. And throughout it all, he kept pointing the credit back to God.

Thank God first.
Change what you're listening to.
Be careful about what and who you put on the pedestal.
Keep coming to church.

After Cody finished, Isaac talked about what we had just witnessed. He called Cody the quintessential example of what it looks like to put off the old self and put on the new self.

That was exactly what we had been talking about in Colossians 3.

It wasn't a theoretical picture of transformation. We had just watched a real person stand in front of us and tell us what God was doing in his life.

And all the while, I was watching it happen through the camera.

Cody was the one giving his testimony.

But Isaac was still in the frame.

Watching Cody that morning, and knowing why I had chosen to keep Isaac in the frame, made me think about my own life.

If I know that someone who is struggling needs people around them, do I give myself that same grace? When the struggle is mine, do I keep the shot wide?

I thought about a moment from college.

I was my sorority's recruitment director, and we were preparing for our first recruitment party. It was a big responsibility, and I was supposed to be the person who had it all together. I was the one organizing things, answering questions, solving problems and making sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing.

And then, somewhere in the middle of all of that, I had a panic attack.

I don't remember every detail of what was happening around me, but I remember how small I felt. Everything that had seemed manageable suddenly felt overwhelming. The person who was supposed to have it handled couldn't seem to get her own thoughts and emotions back under control.

And I wasn't alone.

Vic, who was my boyfriend then and is my husband now, and some of my sorority sisters sat with me. They stayed with me. They helped me regain perspective and focus.

They didn't fix everything.

They just stayed.

At the time, that mattered more than I probably understood.

What I remember just as clearly as the panic itself is the embarrassment that came afterward.

It wasn't just that I had had a panic attack. It was that other people had seen it.

I had always been looked at as capable and strong. I was the person who could organize things, figure things out, answer the questions, and keep moving when something needed to get done. I was comfortable being that person. I knew how to be that person.

But in that moment, I didn't feel strong. I felt small. Inadequate. Out of control.

And the people who knew me that way had seen this version of me too.

I think that was the part that was hardest to sit with. I couldn't convince myself that I was still the same person because, in my mind, being capable meant being able to handle things. If I needed someone to sit beside me and help me find my way back to perspective, then maybe I wasn't as capable as everyone thought I was.

Of course, that wasn't true. But it felt true.

Vic and my sorority sisters didn't see me as less of a person because I needed them. They didn't seem embarrassed for me. They didn't treat me like I had become someone different.

I was the one who had decided that needing help was something to be embarrassed about.

Looking back, I can see how much of that embarrassment came from being seen outside the version of myself I was comfortable showing people. I knew how to let people see me when I was organized, confident, and getting things done. I didn't know what to do with being seen when I was overwhelmed and needed someone else to help me get my footing again.

I know that better now than I did then.

But I also know that I'm not completely past the instinct to crop the picture.

I can still feel the pull toward figuring things out on my own, toward getting my thoughts organized before I let anyone see the mess, toward wanting to come to the other side of something before I admit I was struggling in the first place.

Maybe that's why Cody's testimony and that camera shot stayed with me.

I knew, without really thinking about it, that Cody shouldn't have to stand there alone.

I just have to remember that the same thing is true of me.

And maybe that is where the camera turns again.

Because sometimes the temptation isn't only to hide the parts of ourselves that feel weak. Sometimes it's to measure them. To look at someone else's story and decide that theirs counts more because it is bigger, harder, more dramatic, or more obviously changed.

That is where Isaac's words to Cody caught me.

Isaac told Cody that a hundred and thirty days of transformation and sixty years of following Jesus don't put two people in different categories. They don't create a hierarchy. They are both in Christ, and Christ is in both of them.

"I can't pull some superior act on you," Isaac told him.

I love how plainly he said it.

There was no minimizing what God had done in Cody's life. A hundred and thirty days was worth celebrating. Cody had come through things that had caused real damage, and God was doing something new in him.

But sixty years of following Jesus didn't give Isaac a higher standing.

And a dramatic turnaround didn't give Cody a higher standing either.

They were both in Christ.

That is exactly where Colossians 3 takes us. Paul has just spent the passage telling us to put off the old self and put on the new, and then he names all the ways we are tempted to divide and rank one another: Jew and Greek, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian and Scythian, slave and free.

Those categories mattered deeply in the world Paul was writing to. But in Christ, they don't determine someone's standing.

Neither does the length of their story.

Neither does how dramatic their testimony is.

Neither does how obvious their transformation looks from the outside.

We are not standing in front of Jesus with a scoreboard.

And that gets uncomfortably personal for me.

Because if I'm honest, my temptation probably isn't to look at someone else's dramatic story and think, "I'm better than them."

It is almost the opposite.

I can look at someone whose life has changed in a big, visible way and wonder if my quieter, slower, still-unfinished growth really counts for as much.

Their testimony has a before and after you can point to.

Mine can feel more like a long series of small decisions, wrong turns, course corrections, and ordinary days of trying again.

It is easy to think that dramatic transformation must be more meaningful transformation.

But Jesus doesn't measure us that way.

A hundred and thirty days next to sixty years doesn't create a hierarchy.

And neither does my story next to someone else's.


None of us have arrived. Not Cody at a hundred and thirty days. Not Isaac after sixty years. We are all still on the same unfinished road, still being made new a little at a time.

That's not a discouraging thought. It means the finish line was never the point. Being shaped, day by day, into the likeness of Christ is the point, and none of us reaches the end of that in this life. We just keep walking it.

Maybe this is what putting off the old self and putting on the new self looks like this week.

Not always something dramatic.

Maybe for me, the old self looks like cropping people out of the picture. Trying to handle things on my own. Only letting people see the organized, capable version of me and keeping the overwhelmed version just outside the frame.

Putting on the new self might look a little different.

It might look like staying in the frame.

Letting someone sit with me when I don't have it all together. Letting people know when I need help instead of waiting until I've already figured everything out. Remembering that needing someone doesn't make me less of a person.

Cody didn't stand in front of our church alone that morning. Isaac was in the frame with him.

And years ago, when I needed someone to sit with me and help me find my perspective again, Vic and my sorority sisters stayed in the frame with me too.

Maybe that's what I want to remember this week.

The next time I'm tempted to go it alone, I want to remember to leave room for someone else in the shot.

This Week
As you go into this week, think about where you might be tempted to crop the picture.

Is there something you're trying to handle on your own? Someone you've been reluctant to let see that you're struggling? A place where you're waiting until you have everything figured out before you let anyone in?

You don't have to fix all of it this week.

Just notice it.

Then think of one person you trust and consider what it might look like to let them into the frame.

Maybe that means asking for help. Maybe it means admitting that you're having a hard day. Maybe it simply means letting someone sit with you without feeling like you have to make yourself look okay first.

And as you do, remember what Isaac reminded Cody: there is no pulling rank in Christ.

We're all still being changed.

We're all still learning what it means to put off the old self and put on the new.

And none of us was meant to do that alone.

Prayer
Lord, thank you that you are still making us new. Forgive us for the times we try to go it alone, hide our struggles, or measure our journey against someone else's. Give us the humility to admit when we need help and the courage to let others come alongside us.

Thank you for the people you have placed in our lives who are willing to stay in the frame with us. Help us to be those people for someone else. Remind us that there is no pulling rank in Christ. Whether we are taking our first steps or have been following you for sixty years, we are all being shaped by your grace.

This week, help us put off the old self and put on the new. Teach us to trust you, to receive the people you have given us, and to keep becoming more like Jesus.

Amen.