Guest post by Tracy Lane
I’m tired of faking it. Aren’t you?
It’s exhausting spending more time getting ready for a Tuesday morning women’s Bible study than I did getting ready for my wedding! Well, that might be a little exaggerated but honestly, aren’t you tired of being checked out, looked over, and mentally critiqued by every woman you walk by? And after awkward critical glances are exchanged, we feign interest and friendship with each other with shallow conversations about where our shoes are from, what we made for dinner last night, and claim that we are both “fine.”
Let’s not do that anymore.
Those surface conversations do nothing for the hurting hearts that rest in each of us. For the questions that hide behind our lined eyes. For the help we’d like to get from and give to each other.
Would you choose authenticity this year? Emily is.
She says, “I claim authenticity because being real with people builds trust and fosters openness. I’ve been encouraged by a dear friend who has shown me what sincerity and transparency look like. I’ve found that authenticity is contagious. I now know what a true friend is and that I can be excited about who God has made me and I can be accepting of who God has made others. “
Emily is committing to authenticity this year by “being herself in all aspects and not putting on a front to anyone.” When someone asks her what’s going on in her life, she won’t give in to fear and respond with recited answers that people want to hear. She will answer with truth. It doesn’t mean she’ll tell her deepest, darkest secrets to everyone she meets. But it does mean that she might ask for prayer if she’s having a hard day. Or she might share a small way that God is working in her life.
Authenticity is being okay with not being okay. It’s how everyone should live life, because life isn’t perfect all the time. Okay let’s be authentic…life isn’t perfect EVER of the time.
Authenticity is a life of laying down your pride and not caring what other people think. It’s instead caring for those other people enough to be real with them as an invitation for them to be real with you.
Sure, life is messy when you truly get involved with those around you.
And it’s also sweet to celebrate joys with one another. Light to bear burdens with one another. Fun to have a true, authentic friend by your side. Refreshing to put your hair up, leave those yoga pants on, and admit the fight you had with your husband that brought your glaring selfishness to light. The battle you won with your 2-year-old because you finally learned not to scream louder than her. The courage you saw in your uncle while you sat with him as he waited to hear if he had cancer.
Really, that’s much better than talking about clothes, recipes, and paint color. Agreed?
Dear Barbara:
Yes this is true. I do believe though that it is important to take care of ourselves and to look respectable when in public. In our area the young women look terrible. They go to Walmart in their pajama bottoms and they look pregnant even though they are not. I do not talk about clothes, shoes, food or paint because I am not considered wealthy. I am clean, I try to eat, sleep, and exercise in order to maintain my health. God wants us to be beautiful in all the ways. Plus I think we will feel better if we put some self-respect in our lives.
Sincerely,
Rhoda Tuckey
Oh, how I would like to be “real”. sometimes I feel that if I show who I really am sometimes, I will be rejected. Then I tell myself that this is between me and Him…
This blog has given me “permission” to be authentic.
thank you