Our chocolate lab, Chico, is 14 ½ years old. That’s about 100 in people years. It should be no surprise then, that he’s pretty mellow. He loves eating, and these days that warrants a slightly more vigorous than average tail wagging, but that’s about it. He almost never barks and his days of grabbing pies off the kitchen counter are long gone.

So I was shocked when I came home to find this normally placid couch potato of ours barking like a lunatic and banging his snout against the front window like he was trying to escape a house fire.

What had inspired this kind of crazed reaction? Solicitors. Two guys hawking home improvement services thought it would be cute to wear funny Viking hats (braids and all) while trying to convince cold-weary homeowners that they needed to prep for spring by getting new siding and a deck.

I wasn’t buying it, and clearly neither was Chico.

What surprised me was that Chico had shown me a face I’d never seen before. He’s normally a sweet, loving, and funny boy. A clown not a bully. It made me wonder what other faces he had hidden that I’d never seen.

Several people have asked why I decided to write this blog. One reason is that Chico’s not the only one with multiple faces.

I’ve got two that rarely cross paths: my church face and my worldly face. One is kind and patient and joyful. The other is frank and funny and occasionally mean-spirited. One turns the other cheek. The other curses when she’s mad. But neither one is entirely honest.

And both are hypocrites.

By limiting the people with whom I’m willing to be completely myself, I’m shortchanging them and me.

Jesus doesn’t ask us to change before He loves us. He just says follow me. And I do. But, like all Jesus followers, I’m a work in progress. And I will be as long as I’m breathing. So I’m going to stop showing the face I think people want to see and start showing the one true face I have – the imperfect one. And this blog is my first step.