Week Four: Share Without Pretending

So what does it mean to share without pretending?  As I began studying this topic, I quickly realized that there were a lot of differing opinions as to what it actually means and there were a lot of different directions that we could go.  But, I want to find out for myself what God’s word says about this, and being that I most certainly do not have the gifting of a teacher, it’s a little scary to dive in and start from scratch.  Having said that, the Bible says that when we seek God, we will find Him.  So, I’m looking forward to where God is going to meet us throughout the next week.

“When you come looking for me, you’ll find me.  Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” GOD’s Decree.

~Jeremiah 29:13

Sharing without pretending…let’s start by defining some terms.

• The word share(-ing) means:  to partake of, use, experience, occupy, or enjoy with others; to distribute, to grant.
• The word pretend(-ing) means:  to give a false appearance of being, possessing, or performing; to claim, represent, or assert falsely.

When I put those together, here’s the definition I came up with…

Sharing without pretending means the ability to give, experience, and enjoy someone or something with others without representing ourselves (or our motives) as something that we (they) are not.  In essence, it’s taking off the social mask and walking in transparency…in the truth of who we really are…not who we’d like to be or who we think others want us to be.   It’s sharing our true selves with others…our strengths, our struggles, our victories, and our defeats.

Did that make anyone else’s heart start to race just a little?  I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard lots of speakers/authors address this topic of “taking off the masks” and “living in the freedom of transparency.”  While I’m sure that God used what they shared to touched the hearts of many in those various settings, I more often than not found myself sitting there thinking, “that sounds great and I love the concept, but you just don’t understand…you don’t know where I have been or the roads I have walked…you don’t get the excruciating pain that lies just barely under the surface that I have fought most of my life to bury just so I can breathe and function…you don’t know the things I have done…the thoughts I have thought…the hurt I’ve experienced…the things that have been done to me…the choices I’ve made…the judgments…the shame…and now you’re asking me to rip the band aid off, lay it all out exposed for all to see…and then what?

See, I think that’s the question that often doesn’t get answered when this topic comes up.  Once we expose all of this stuff and we are standing there in our brokenness and our shame, then what???  What’s next?  What am I supposed to do with all of that once I let it out?  How do I go about the business of healing?  How do I start re-building?  How do I practically do things differently?  Who’s going to walk on that journey with me?  How do I deal with questions and obstacles?

If you’re anything like me, those are all the unanswered questions that kept me stuck in a never-ending cycle of performance and “pretending” and resulted in a lot of surface level relationships and keeping people at arm’s length out of a need to self-protect. But here’s the thing…all of that was driven by two things:  1) A lack of clearly understanding who God is and how much He loves me, and 2) A fear of rejection which is one of Satan’s most powerful and effective tools that he uses to keep us isolated and stuck.

This week, we’re going to take a look at the lies that we believe that keep us in those places of pretending.  We’re going to uncover the truth about what God really thinks of us and what He desires from us.  And we’re going to (as Dr. Phil says) put some verbs in our sentences as we learn how to extend these same truths along with huge amounts of grace and love in our relationships with others.

Let me leave you with this question today and please feel free to comment as we get this conversation started:

• What has kept you from taking off those “pretend” masks in your relationships with others?

~Kris Samovitz