What you see is what you get.
How honest are you? I have been thinking about this much lately. How honest am I with myself about myself? Sometimes it is difficult to tell myself the truth about what is really stirring deep in my soul. Did you grow-up or do you live in an environment where honesty is discouraged? Have you learned to deny yourself at your own expense?
Is there a gigantic purple elephant dancing in the living room, at the office, or in your heart and you are pretending it is not there?
Other times, we claim we are being honest when in reality we are envious, jealous, angry or afraid. We want to be honest about how we percieve others, but not ourselves.
I recently had a discussion with my wife about something. It turns out that I was angry. As I reflected on my anger, I realized I wasn’t nearly as angry as I was afraid. It was fear disguised as anger. So, I got up the courage and went and said, "I am sorry, I was afraid." Funny, I realized that I had to be honest about my fear of my fear. I had to be honest that I was afraid to admit that I was afraid. Being honest with myself is not easy, especially if I am attempting to protect myself from some form of pain, hurt, or fear.
Honesty is a courageous act.
Are you courageous?
Pretending to feel what I do not feel in order to hide from my truth is not living authentically and destroys my inner-freedom.
Being honest with myself and naming my reality allows be to be more fully human—more of myself.
Living honestly frees me from living an inauthentic life. The more honest I am the more authentic I am. What you see is what you get.
Humans look at outward appearance, God looks at the heart.Your heart matters to God.
2 Comments:
Authenticity through honesty is something that I long for, but by my very nature find very difficult to achieve. I'm a perfectionist by nature and would almost rather die than admit that I was or am wrong about anything, rather it be large or small. My upbringing may play into this somewhat, but having reach an age of accountability some time ago, I'm fully responsible for my actions regardless of how I was raised.
The Lord's really been taking me to task over this lately, because it seems that everytime that I feel strongly enough to comment on the church or an individual in a very cutting or critical way, my eyes are opened to the very personification of this in my own life. Nothing like the echo of your own words to give you pause. I sometimes find myself in the company of Peter who said that he'd die with Christ rather than betray his master. The cock's crowed in sets of 3's so much lately that there's a ringing in my ears...nothing like the big talk of my honest, authentic and transpartent words to be swallowed up by the deafening roar of my lie-filled, unauthentic and cloudy walk.
God give me guts, that leads to the integrity, that is authenticity...
Thanks Lee. Wow. My prayer is often, "Please help me not to deceive myself." Thanks again for your comment.
Blessings,
Rick
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