In honor of embracing my truest, realest, authentic self in all the negative and positive ways: I am so frazzled and embarrassed to be myself. I like to sing songs and pretend that I don’t care about what people think, but I do and it can paralyze me to the point where even a simple title for this first post has me stressed.
For some insight into my thoughts:
“Why are you doing this?”
“Grace, people get it—you love God, you’re a Christian, Jesus freak whatever. Enough.”
“No one cares.”
“Haven’t enough people unfollowed you?”
“Embarrassing. You are embarrassing.”
I’ll stop here for my own sake, the reality of even typing those thoughts out is enough to bring me to tears as I sit here. I wonder if people, my sweet friends, will see this part and message me about how I am none of these things, about how encouraging I am to their faith, or something incredibly heartfelt against these lies that I let myself believe. I feel wrong to think I am encouraging to people.
“That’s so prideful of you.”
“Yikes, you think people would say that?”
“AYCE (All You Can Eat) for your ego, huh?”
I wish I wasn’t such a fragile person. I cry at the drop of a dime. My friends will tell you, and they don’t even have to be a close friend to know this about me. I cry at sad commercials. I cry when I tell someone they hurt my feelings. I cried (happily, I realized I needed to add) when my friend sent me a tiktok of her and her boyfriend dancing because I imagined being at their wedding.
I remember thinking to myself about the laws of supply and demand, I know it’s weird but let me explain, so if my tears are in high supply then they have less value so whatever I cry about isn’t really meaningful because it’s not special when I cry. So, I hate it when I cry because isn’t it just another day for Grace? This is how I deny the person God has made me because I think God cries too, I think God is grieved over things we think are so small and stupid but to Him mean the world. So He made me and people like me to cry and grieve and feel even when it seems dramatic or dumb or unneccesary because God cares about things like how many hairs I have on my head.
I am letting God teach me: I am allowed to feel quickly and to express those feelings as I surrender to Him. So, this doesn’t give me a free pass to have outbursts or sin, but I am not only allowed, I am a reflection of God when I cry and feel emotional even if no one else is the same. I feel sad to reflect on the shame I feel when I cry, but I thank God, I thank You so much God, that there is no shame that is greater than the cross.
Writing is something I have always loved to do. I am a huge writer, I journal all the time especially for the past 6 years, and I keep it to myself because of this great big ball of shame that sits in my chest. When I write, it shows people who I am, and I am not a good person. I like to think of myself as a good person, great even, I am lovely to my friends and a good daughter, if you ever work with me in a class I will try my best to share my notes, if I am your student I ask about your day, and I just try and try to live up to this fake image. It’s not that I’m fake but that image of me isn’t real. The truth is I am also easily impatient, a flake, prone to pride, unresponsive, and unempathetic so much of the time. I think I end the story there when God says, “that’s my unfinished product that I am working out to completion”. Wow. Isn’t that the story of the gospel I need to tell myself? That I need to tell others. Who you are isn’t all the bad of course, but even all that good isn’t your own, and all that bad isn’t God’s. So, as God restores me to my special, unique self, He is taking out the parts that weren’t meant to be there: the sin and the shame that comes free along with it.
There’s parts I want to explain like how I’m not trying to give out morals or fix myself. I don’t really have a goal other than embrace the person God has made me and do my best to glorify God in writing and sharing this journey, with no plot or perfect resolution, that He is taking me through. I feel weird to end my first post like this, but I don’t need a strong concluding statement like my papers. I’ll just leave that to God.
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