Exposed

I told someone yesterday, I write my way out of the dark. I have to expose the feelings, the sentences, the lies – and everything else – to the light. I’ve never been able to keep it internalized.

Even if I’m struggling with something about someone else, I generally don’t hide until the struggle is past. I open up and tell them what I’m struggling with. It’s not a reflection on them, truly; I’m choosing to be vulnerable with them about even the ugly things that go on in my heart. I hope for a deeper trust, but I’ve figured out over the years that it’s not a really good idea, being that honest with people. They don’t really see that I love them when I share. I suspect they feel more attacked.

All this makes me wonder what it is I trust about my own friends. I suppose I always hope they will share the same with me, or even if they don’t, that at least they will be willing to be there. I see others; but I don’t always see myself. Maybe that is why I share my struggles; maybe I hope that someone will look at me and tell me what they see, help me sort out the mess.

So I write me out, and then I sit there staring at what I’ve written, and I despise what I see of my heart splayed out there. I don’t really wonder why people walk away, seeing me like that. Heck, I’d leave too if I didn’t have to live with me. I could be on my own side here – why do I sabotage myself the way I do, being so defiantly honest about my mess?

My ability to maintain any sort of “reputation” has been nonexistent for years. But even when I was maintaining one, I walked around with a to-do list in my head: “don’t talk too much, it’s her turn now,” “I have to be humble now, not proud – deflect that praise,” “why don’t we just pray right here – because it will impress her that I stopped immediately to pray” (not sure if God even listened to that one!), “keep a straight face,” “love this person who is being unlovable because you really need to”, “do your devotions – everyone else around you is doing it, and they’re watching”, “they all say it’s right – just do it, your heart should follow at some point.” Seriously, the list went on and on.

And to be very honest? I was the most self-centered, self-focused person I knew, and I felt FAKE. I could see what perfect looked like, and I was determined to get there. My determination led me to Bible college, where surrounded by cream-of-the-crop Christianity, I figured I had never actually been a Christian in the first place, because I wasn’t one of the best there. I went from being a potential RA into accountability discipleship that left me asking if there had ever been any real fruit in my life.

When my health went down, so did my ability to maintain that constant drill. I had no choice but to learn to live from my heart. I’d grown up being a good girl by choice; I was shocked and horrified to discover just how far short I could fall of the perfection I’d been trying to reach. The questions scared me good at first; the way other Christians reacted to me hurt deeply.

But I discovered something. I could live with myself if I brought that mess into the light. Did you know that having a pure heart means being quite literally poured out? Pouring my heart out – confessing – saying the same thing as – my sins to God, and to others – it left my heart free. I was no longer weighted down by the choking need to measure up – to my standards, or to anyone else’s.

And being exposed like that made me more vulnerable to love. It made me more desperate for the Cross to mean something more than “I just have to do the right thing.” It opened a door into my soul to let the Gospel come in and rule my life. I stopped caveating God and worrying about the timing on His work in me, and started trusting. I stopped striving to be less and chose to be who I was, which is less anyway. I stopped trying to make room for people and opened my eyes to see them. And I stopped choosing judgment to make myself feel better and I learned to grow in (and under) grace. I chose to stop rooting out my own sin under Adam and to live under Christ without judging myself or my actions, since there is now no condemnation in Him.

Instead of underestimating God, I stepped out on Him, staked my life on His power in me, and His timing for my heart-change, which doesn’t run on my “must-be-perfect-now” schedule. My testimony doesn’t ride on my own “righteous” conduct. It rides on a Holy Spirit who intercedes for me and Jesus Christ who stands between me and holy God, perfecting me for relationship with Him.

In a sense, I gave up my own responsibility for my life, which oddly resulted in my giving up my own right to my life. I can no longer do anything without considering who God is in my heart as I go forward – whether it’s taking pictures, interacting with my family, losing my temper, or getting sick. But I get to live from my heart now, and without layers and layers of hidden muck to work through, things are pretty open between God and me – even if I’m not quite sure about Him sometimes.

So I pretty much live wide open. I really have nothing to hide about myself, though I do use some caution when I share publicly out of care for others in my life.

That thing I’ve been struggling about recently? It’s living THIS with people who know me, living this with people who thought I should be one thing and haven’t seen the change they’ve been looking for. It’s living this without the physical capacity to compensate for my own mess. I’m engaged in a daily battle to pick up the grace of Christ and put it on over my internal struggles and questions instead of reacting and trying to fix me up and come up with my own answers without Him.

And the more of me that gets exposed to His grace, the lighter I feel, because if no one else in the world will come alongside and understand and want to know me, He does, and He knows it ALL, and wants my heart anyway.