For 364 days of the year, we tell children not to talk to strangers. Then on Halloween, we encourage kids to not just go up to strangers but to hold out their hands and ask for candy.A strange holiday for sure.
Let's face it though,it's not just kids that look forward to partaking in this day.
A day where it's accepted, albeit expected for people to dress like someone or something else. It's fun right? For one day we get to put on a costume and carry around a plastic sword (that was me) and people aren't phased by it. It's acceptable to be the person behind the mask.
But the truth is long after the sugar high wears off and the pumpkins turn brown many of us are still wearing masks.The iron man and monkey masks are replaced with invisible masks fastened on by insecurity, doubt, fear, mistakes, and struggles that we try desperately to keep people from seeing.
We wouldn't walk up to some stranger and say "Hey I'm really depressed because I feel like I'm failing as a parent.Can I have some candy?"
How embarrassing would it be if people saw those things about us? How scary to think about people actually getting to know the real us.
The us behind the mask.
It can be exhausting,having to maintain a facade of everything-is-going-great and I’m-fine-how-are-? We don't usually want to admit we need help, let alone ask for it.
We're afraid what people see they might not like. And let's face it, we all want to be liked. The world is starving for acceptance. For love. But where are we looking for it and who are we look for it as? The real us or the facade of who we are trying to be for everyone else?
Sometimes we may attempt to remove the mask, seeking some sort of freedom but as soon as someone judges us or even looks at us funny the mask goes right back on. Or is replaced by a new mask.
I see now even as a Christian at a young age I wore masks. I didn't want people to see my insecurities, my failures, or weaknesses. A christian isn't supposed to show those right? I believed if people saw my faults they wouldn't be drawn to Christ, they'd just think well if she has problems too what's so great about being a christian? Acting like things are okay when they're not.Things were easier that way.
“When you’re afraid to be who you really are, you lose touch with the truth of who you are and act in ways you may later regret,” Dwoskin
My mask brought me what I thought was comfort and security.And yet people couldn't get to know the real me.Even though I was free through Jesus I see now I didn't know true freedom.
True Freedom comes when we take off the masks.When we realize it's okay to not be okay.(Part of why we love REVOLUTION CHURCH so much.)
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, "That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
Only through Jesus can we find true peace in that. God knows what it will take to get us there and it usually means facing something we've never faced to draw us to Him and into a dependence on Him that we never experienced before. Sometimes it's giant things or a bunch of small things He uses to reveal to us the masks we're wearing and then help us get rid of them.
When I first got sick several years ago I was angry,frustrated, and scared but I didn't want to admit the extent of my pain to other people(physically and emotionally). So many times I suffered in silence. Even those closest to me didn't know the extent of my suffering. I didn't want to look like a failure...to myself,to others,even to God.
Isn't it funny though how we so often try to mask our feelings even from God. But the truth is, God knows. He knows our minds and our hearts better than anyone. Even though He can see through our masks He doesn't expect us to get rid of them before we come to Him.Wow.
I think so many times we feel like we have it all together.Especially as Christians. But hurting people don't need to see fixed up people who appear seem like they have a perfect life when they really don't.They need to see what Jesus can do through a hurting,flawed people,because that's what Christians are.All Christians. Screwed up people saved by grace. God's used my pain as an outlet for me to finally be able to be real with Him and through that with other people.
I open up with my family and close friends about my pain and I share my questions and fears with Jesus. I'm so thankful he doesn't want the fixed up, masked, version of me. He just wants me. The same goes for you. Christian or not, He just wants you.You're His beloved because he created you.That's what I love about Him,we can come to him just as you are.Messed up!
What masks are you wearing? It's only when we can be real with ourselves and with God that he can help us remove those masks so we can build authentic relationships and experience true freedom.
It's time to get real. Let people get to know the person behind the mask.
"You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb."Psalm 139: 1-4, 13
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