Your smile is plastered, but your heart is breaking. All you need to do is talk about it, or at least hear that somebody else has gone through it and made it. All you need is to not feel isolated and alone. You just hate feeling like you are the only one that has ever had a baby out of wedlock, had a sexually transmitted disease or been cheated on by a no good knucklehead. But where can you find someone that has “gone through”? Everyone around you looks so perfect. Everyone appears like all is well. Everyone is jumping, shouting, running, and dancing all over the sanctuary.
People at work seem to be oblivious to anything other than their own ambitions. Your spouse is one way at home, another way at church and still a different way when you are alone.
The masks we wear hide our grief, our shame, and our “realness”. We cover up using humor, material things, performances, or by becoming mean, tactless and standoffish. In other words, we become phony. We play the role…the starring role actually, in our own lives. People clap after each performance, but when the curtain goes down and the lights are out, the mask is removed. We look at the stranger in the mirror, wipe the tears, apply more makeup and get ready for Act II. Our routine becomes flawless. Our phoniness becomes perfected.
How do you end the performance and get on with reality? It is only in reality that destiny can be achieved. God can only bless and prosper who we really are…not who we pretend to be. Therefore, it is imperative that we re-learn how to be authentic. How do you begin.. by striving to speak the truth in love, even its it the truth about ourselves.
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An excerpt from an upcoming Book by CDJamerson
