When You Aren’t Being As Real As You Think

Before I preached my last message, I did a run-through for Tyler to get some feedback. He said the content and flow were good overall, but there was one observation he made that gave me pause:

He said that it felt a little too polished, and the stories I shared were a little too safe.

Whenever I write or speak, it’s important to me to be authentic, to share some stories from my life and move beyond just sharing abstract ideas. I want to share what it looks like to actually LIVE the message and not just give a few nice, tidy bullet points.

So when he gave this feedback, I knew I had some adjustments to make. And here’s the thing: I THOUGHT I was being real and vulnerable, but it was very controlled and I was only sharing enough to make it LOOK like I was being real. This wasn’t a conscious effort, not a manipulation or anything. I was not aware that this is what I was doing, but looking back, I see that I was still very much playing it safe, only letting people see the surface of my struggle.

I made some changes to the message, and feel like with the end result, I got to a much more authentic place (whenever you break down crying in the middle of your message, that tends to ruin the whole “neat and polished” vibe).

As I think about what it means to be real and vulnerable, to let people see that I’m human, I’ve been considering what it looks like to further peel back the layers. What parts of the glittering image am I still trying to preserve?

In many ways just in my life in general, I’m still playing it safe and not letting my guard down.

Maybe I need to allow myself to get a little more messy.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to go to the other extreme of just sharing EVERYTHING. There are still parts of my life intended to only be between me and God, things I only share with close, trusted friends.

This isn’t about sharing everything. But it IS about not working so hard to cover up the parts of me that aren’t bright and shiny. This is about not trying so hard to perform in order to make myself look better than I am.

I want to find the happy middle between those two extremes of sharing too much and not sharing at all. I’ve been reminding myself of this:

I don’t have to perform and I don’t have to hide…I can simply BE.

I don’t have to perform and try to impress people.

I also don’t have to hide who I really am.

I am free to be who I am, to let the beauty and the brokenness exist together.

So I’ve been asking myself these two questions a lot lately, in those moments when I feel like I’m not quite acting like myself:
Am I performing?
Am I hiding?

I’m trying to notice when I go to either of those places, and I’m reminding myself that it’s ok to just BE. I don’t have to try so hard. I also don’t have to hide my true self out of fear or shame.

I don’t have to perform. I don’t have to hide. I can simply BE. And when I live in that truth, I’m not afraid to let people see the unpolished, weak parts of me. I’m free to let that show, because it’s part of me, and I don’t have to hide it or try to act like I have it all together. I can be, simply, ME.

We Are All Broken

A couple weeks ago, I re-posted a picture with a quote from Shelia Walsh:

“My brokenness is a better bridge for people than my pretend wholeness ever was.”

When I first saw that quote, I thought, YES! This exactly. I completely agree, and I’ve experienced the truth of this both in myself and in others who have taken a risk and allowed me to see their brokenness.

This past weekend, I experienced the truth of this yet again. But agreeing with a quote like that, “liking” it and sharing it, feels a whole lot easier than actually living it.

I gave the message at our church last weekend. If you were there, you know that I shared some stories from my own life about my moments of failure and weakness as a parent. The most recent story I shared was from TWO DAYS BEFORE THAT, so it was INCREDIBLY fresh in my heart and mind. This wasn’t sharing a struggle from my past, but from my present.

I shared that in the few days leading up to the message, I hadn’t been the kind of mom that I want to be. My fuse was short, my patience ran low, and I basically felt like I was failing as a mom.

And in all of that, I felt alone, like everyone else had it together and I was the only one. I know that isn’t true, but that’s how I felt.

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But if that quote is true, and I believe it is, that means that people relate to my brokenness because we are ALL broken, no matter how much we pretend to be whole or have it together.

For a long time, I thought the only way to influence people for Jesus was to be a good example, to show how good you could be if you were a Christian. I followed a try-harder gospel, one where grace was for the “sinners” and if you had Jesus, you should have it together. There was no room for struggle in that kind of “faith.”

But now, I see that when I try to be the model example, I get in the way of the work of Jesus. When I act like it depends on me to keep it together in order for people to see Jesus, I miss the point of the gospel entirely.

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When we pretend to be whole, like we have it all together, people don’t relate to us. Because that isn’t real life. The way to connect with other people is in our brokenness, in our humanity, because that’s where the message of Jesus can really shine through as the amazing news that it is.

Because when I’m honest about my brokenness, that’s when the story of redemption is told. The story becomes not about me, but about Jesus and what HE can do.

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Shame wants to keep us silent. It tells us to hide our brokenness. It says that we are alone. But when we speak the truth of our struggle, shame loses its power. Because when we bring all of who we are into the light of Jesus, we’ll see that we’re not alone, and that we’re in this together.

But if we keep our brokenness hidden, it will never be healed.

This is not easy. Believe me, I know. It’s a risk, and it requires us to come of our safe place of hiding.

So if you want to stay trapped and bound in brokenness, keep it to yourself. But if you want to experience community and freedom, bring ALL of you into the light. We’re here, in all our beauty and brokenness, waiting to welcome you.

(Image from Propel Women on Istagram.)