I’ve been thinking about truth lately, specifically my truth and what that looks like.  I’ve been thinking about what it would look like to live a raw, honest, no holds barred, transparent kind of life. A true life.

That’s not to say that life should be lived with the expectation that we share every thought, every idea or opinion, every whim that we have. Rather, perhaps it means being fully present, aware, and sometimes even vulnerable in our everyday lives.

Vulnerability is a tricky thing, and something with which I struggle.  My instinct and natural tendencies make me one who would share absolutely everything with the people in my life.  I have made the mistake of sharing too much too fast and having it come back to haunt me.  Experiences like this have turned me into someone who often shares very little.  I can be guarded, suspicious, cold.  I am working on finding that middle ground where I can be vulnerable with, as Brené Brown says, people who have earned it.

I remember a time when I felt free to be who I was.  I think I was five. But then the voices of the world started creeping in, telling me that who I was wasn’t good enough or was too much.  I was shown and told that my emotions were too big, too loud, too colorful, too intrusive and so I learned to not trust them.  I was told that who I was was not acceptable, so I began a lifetime of changing, trying to cram myself into a box that was not meant to contain me.

These are the days of unfolding myself from the origami shape I was pretending to be.  These are the days of discovery and ownership.  These are the days of learning, observing, and oh so cautiously revealing.  These are the days of me.

This becoming is tricky work – slippery, confusing, slow, sometimes lonely.  All of these feelings are uncomfortable for me, but I am learning to trust the process and to watch as a clearer picture of me begins to emerge from both the pieces I am putting together and the ones I am discarding.  I am leaning on my truth holders to remind me when I begin to go off course.  I am spending time alone and writing, creating, reading, remembering who I am.

What I am finding out is this:

When I live from a place of truth and honesty, from a place of authenticity and awareness, from the place that only I fully occupy, that’s when things are good and right and whole.  It’s when I start shape-shifting that I have problems, when I start pouring myself into other people’s molds that I lose sight of who I am.

I cannot become a better version of myself until I fully become myself, shedding the skins and costumes I have worn for decades.

As imperfect as I am, I was created by a perfect God and my wholeness and peace will be found only in Him, by first being who He created me to be and then in being obedient to His call.  He created me for a purpose and I cannot fulfill that purpose if I’m busy trying to be someone other than the one He created.

Here’s to the truth seekers.  May we all find shalom.