Real

The practice of curating parts of oneself is something many of us do to some degree. We carefully create a persona, but it's always only one that's partially true. And maintaining this created personality, this assembled self, can be pretty exhausting.

I often think that the effort we put into pretending is based in a fear of really being known, of truly being seen as we actually are. I mean, perhaps we each have a wound or a vulnerable place that we have to protect in order to survive, and yet sometimes we overcompensate so much for the things we're trying to hide, that no one ever suspects the truth. And then we're left in the aloneness of never really being known.

In the end, the only real love in the world is found when you let yourself be truly known. And faith, to me, isn't about belief, it's about the fact that I am most known and most loved by God, the one who created me to begin with.

                                                                           Nadia Bolz-Weber

___________________________________________________

It’s exhausting being me

Or at least being the “me” that I want you to see

Yep, its true

I am not all that sure I want you to know who I really am

This particular soul has closets, lots of them

Full of stuff I’d rather not have known

Old mistakes

Lingering fear

Pits of anger

Crappy self-talk

And so I hide, a lot

I put up barriers and lurk behind them

Hoping no one will see

No one will know

And in the end I am alone

Or at least lonely

Cut off from connection by my own effort

By that persona I have so carefully craft

Sucks doesn’t it?

There is of course one know knows me as I am

And One who loves me (or so I’m told) anyway

There is One who would set me free

By loving me enough that I would dare to be open

Dare to be honest

Dare to be real

All it takes

To change everything

Is a little faith