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.