Back in the beginning of September we had a picnic planned that was to be outside. As it turned out, that day they were calling for thunderstorms with damaging winds. At the last minute they changed the picnic to someone's house. When all 50 of us were there some of us ladies were sitting around the table talking about the nightmare we would've had if the picnic would've been moved to our house an hour and a half before around 50 people would arrive! Stories of how we would be running around finding a home for everything! Trying to get things cleaned! Whatever didn't get cleaned up would get put in our room with the door locked! One of the ladies looked at me and asked why if we all are the same way do we worry about it so much! Why do we rush around and try to hide our mess? I answered and said because we're afraid that my mess is worse than yours!
Several days later this conversation came back to my mind. I'm not even sure why it came back to me. But, as I was thinking about it, I thought, you know, it's the same way in our spiritual lives! We always try to hide our "mess" from everyone else! Why do we do that? We know that everyone else has stuff too! But, we are all afraid that our mess might just be worse than someone else's mess! So when we are with others we quickly try to shove all our "mess" into a corner where no one will see it and put on our happy face so that everyone will think that everything is great! Why don't we allow others to see our "mess"? Why can't we be real with others and stop putting on our masks and hiding what's going on inside? I'm not suggesting we start going around whining about how awful our lives are or complaining because I don't like my life! I'm saying being transparent and admitting I have struggles! Admitting I don't have it all together and sometimes I fall! Sharing my hurts and my failures with those around me! Until we come to that place of being authentic we can never really gain victory! Without being real and sharing our hurts with others they are wasted! If we are willing to share then others can be helped by what we've walked through!
This post has been ruminating in my mind for a couple weeks and for some reason I just never got around to posting it. I realize now it's because God wasn't done with it yet! Last week I was with a friend and she was getting ready to tell me something and she prefaced it with, "I've never told you this because I was afraid you would think less of me because you're perfect!" WOW! I felt like someone had thrown water in my face! Boy, was that ever a wake up call! Did I hide who I was so much that someone would think I was perfect? I felt like God said to me you've been wanting to share this post about being real and not hiding things. Are you really willing to do that? How open are you willing to be? Are you ready to share whatever I ask of you? Are you truly willing to allow people to see who you really are?
I'll be honest, I didn't realize how much I must've been wearing a mask. I've always considered myself a fairly transparent person! Well apparently not as much as I am supposed to be! So, I guess I am entering a season of being more transparent! So it looks like some of my future posts may get a little uncomfortable for me as God may be asking me to share more openly! I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous about what this may look like! At the same time, I've been asking God to strip away whatever is in me that will keep me from being completely effective for Him! If this is part of the process I guess that I am one step closer to being the person he needs me to be!
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