This week I had the wonderful treat of going to Bettys Tea Room in Harrogate.

The queues were long, the tables were packed, and I was ready for the full Bettys experience, gluten-free style!

Wanting to get into the mood of the moment, I decided I needed to know a little more about Betty herself. Who was this great Yorkshire woman whose name was across the door and who provided these beautiful cakes! 

Que a problem, on googling the wonderful Betty it turns out nobody actually knows who Betty was.

Instead it turned out Bettys was founded in 1919 by a Swiss confectioner called Fritz, who later changed his name to Frederick! 

Now, I’m sure Frederick was a mighty fine man. He was clearly a rather brilliant confectioner.

But he wasn’t Betty.

And more than a hundred years later, even Bettys themselves say they don’t know for certain where the name came from.

I am a bit disappointed. I wanted Betty and I got Fred.

I had imagined a Betty somewhere in the story. Perhaps a formidable Yorkshire woman in an apron, producing perfect cakes and insisting that the teapot was warmed properly.

Instead, I got Frederick from Switzerland.

And it got me thinking about the gap that can exist between what we present to the world and what is actually going on underneath.

Because perhaps we all have a little bit of “Bettys” about us. A little bit of spin! A bit of marketing seeps into our lives! 

Marketing? you might say. I don’t market myself.

Oh, but I think we really do! Especially in the age of social media 

We share the highs on Facebook. The perfect sunset goes on Instagram. We tell people about the promotion, the holiday, the achievement, the lovely meal and the days when life is going well.

And none of that is necessarily wrong.

But what don’t we photograph?

What don’t we post?

What’s happening behind the carefully selected picture?

And perhaps the more uncomfortable question is this:

How big is the gap between our public persona and our private person?

It’s possible to appear generous publicly and be ungenerous privately.

To talk about kindness and be unkind to those closest to us.

To appear deeply spiritual in church while giving God very little attention when nobody else is watching.

To speak about grace while holding grudges.

To present ourselves as having it all together while privately knowing that things are rather less polished than our public version suggests.

Jesus said:

“There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.”

Luke 12:2

That’s quite a challenge in an age when constructing a public version of ourselves has never been easier.

Because integrity isn’t really about creating the right impression.

It’s about reducing the distance between who people think we are and who we actually are.

Not because we need to tell everybody everything. Privacy is healthy.

Vulnerability needs wisdom and appropriate boundaries.

Authenticity doesn’t require us to publish every struggle on Facebook.

But it does invite us to ask whether the different versions of ourselves actually match.

The person at work.

The person at church.

The person with friends.

The person at home.

The person nobody sees.

And perhaps most importantly, the person God sees.

Maybe maturity isn’t about becoming better at presenting ourselves.

Maybe it’s about gradually becoming the kind of people who have less and less to present.

No carefully constructed version.

No enormous gap between public and private.

Just us – imperfect, growing, sometimes getting it wrong, but increasingly the same person wherever we happen to be.

As for Betty?

I still wish she’d existed.

But perhaps Frederick has given me something rather more useful to think about than afternoon tea!