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“Oh Lord, You have searched me and known me.” Psalm 139:1 (ESV)

As a kid, I loved to pretend.  Great adventures leaping off the page of my latest read transported me into a world of make believe.  Sometimes I would glide across the living room floor like a ballerina.  Other times, I became a teacher and taught a room full of dolls.  Or better yet, I was Billy Graham in our backyard passionately giving the altar call to my siblings and cousins aligned in rows of folding chairs.  Just as I Am never sounded better.

While pretend was fun and uninhibited as a child it doesn’t always serve us well as adults.  It is ever so easy to paste on our smiling faces and pretend our world is fine.  We’ve all probably pretended to not be upset with someone for the sake of peace while our emotions were a raging storm about to explode.  Let’s keep it real here –   at times we’ve pretended happy over someone else’s success while we cringed inside. And how many of us have grabbed the Super Mom cape pretending to have it all together – as chaos surrounded us? Perhaps we’ve pretended for so long we no longer can identify who we really are.

Pretending eventually reverts back to real, and unfortunately, we don’t always get to choose how the reveal unfolds.  The unmasking of what has been hidden or denied may happen when we least expect it.    It’s hard being the real “us.” Buried beneath the pretense of real is where life daily happens. The unfiltered “us” with struggles and challenges.  The organic “us” attempting to manage emotions and weaknesses on the surface.

Releasing our tendencies to pretend opens wide the door to confronting “us.” Facing our emotions, admitting our weaknesses and realizing our desperate need for God peels away the layers of pretense.

In the midst of conflict, we can face issues in a healthy way rather than stuff them.  If jealousy and competitiveness is robbing us of our joy, we can evaluate the motives driving these underlying emotions.  And when pride seeks to convince others we have everything under control when it’s not, we can admit our need for help without losing self-respect.  Until we remove the mask, transformation won’t occur.  However, we can trust God to take the “real us”  and show us how to do life authentically and godly.

“Father, here we land vulnerable and fully exposed “us” out in the light. Best place to land so You can lovingly work in our lives.”

For His Glory

Janet Martin
TRBC Women’s Life