Authenticity

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
― Brené Brown,

Over the last year, I’ve had a new desire to be authentic. It sprang from noticing the authenticity of the people that I look up to and realizing that it’s the only way Jesus calls us to live. I for a long time associated saying I was okay with being strong. I thought that the more I kept my struggles safe in my heart the more I could listen to others and keep the biblical commandment of not complaining. Cause that’s spiritual right?

Until a day when I got in the car with one of my best friends, LB, and she told me “Kelly, I’m one of your best friends and I literally never know what you’re thinking”. That’s when God started working on my heart. Wanting to be a role model to others, it’s always just made sense to me to focus on them and not make an effort to peel back my own layers and be transparent. It’s not that I didn’t want to be, it’s that I honestly didn’t even know what that looked like. I was so used to burying my feelings I could rarely process what they were. People would ask me what I was struggling with or what areas of sin were most apparent in my life and I had no idea.

Through a lot of prayer, being around open people, being asked hard questions and coming to understand Jesus’ authenticity a lot more, I have begun the journey of being transparent. It’s not an easy road. Truthfully, the real me is scary and messy and that’s not the part of me I want to show to myself or anyone else. But the gospel means that we are fully known and fully loved. If that’s true, then the only way others can truly love me is if I let them know who I am fully. I fear being a “whitewashed tomb” (looking nice and put together on the outside and dead on the inside; Matthew 23:27) more than I fear being rejected for being honest. There’s a beauty in being raw and being accepted in that. Like the woman sprawled out on the ground pouring her tears all over Jesus’ feet- to be unashamed of your desires and sin knowing you’re covered by Christ’s acceptance is completely freeing. It’s putting yourself out there always regardless of whether or not others welcome that. Because it’s not about pleasing people, it’s about pleasing the God who LOVES the way He created you- and wants you to find beauty in His image that he made you in.