Being My Truest Self

I had a friend show up at my house recently, kids in tow and coffee in hand. She walked in as I was making dinner, handed me my favorite drink and burst into tears. We hugged as she cried, and my husband ushered all our kids outside to play (bless him!) so that we could talk uninterrupted. The coffee had been a reason to get her out of the house—she went on to tell me about the ugliness of her day, parenting battles lost, discouragement over moments she couldn’t take back.

I didn’t have much wisdom to offer in that moment, but I felt deeply honored to sit by her side, heart aching with her pain, as she poured out her real-life, human struggles. And I loved her more than ever because she showed up at my door, weakness exposed, defenses down.

There is something precious about being invited into the parts of someone else’s story most people don’t get to see. Vulnerability is a gift both when it is given and when it is received.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what a mess I am. I don’t say that to berate myself or hint that you should tell me otherwise. I’m just trying to own the fact that, just like everyone else, there is stuff I need to work through. No matter the life stage or season, there is freedom in admitting we still have room to grow.

If I’m honest, I’ve got a lot of room to grow in every single area of my life. I used to think that if I worked hard enough, I could actually make people think I had my act together. Now I realize that having my act together isn’t actually the goal—freedom is. Freedom to be myself, completely authentic, fully alive, whole-heartedly engaged, bringing the fullness of who I am—my weakness, insecurity, beauty, talent, pain, compassion, and unique story—wherever I go.

The world needs more of that kind of freedom.

It’s more exhausting to pretend I’ve got my act together than to admit that I don’t and embrace the mess—or really, to let those who love me embrace me in the mess. I love how Donald Miller put it in Scary Close when he says, “We don’t think of our flaws as the glue that binds us to the people we love, but they are. Grace only sticks to our imperfections. Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.”

This fall the reality of what it means to be loved as I truly am hit home more deeply than ever. I had been planning and praying for months about a new thing I felt compelled to help start in our town. For the first time in the five years since we moved here, I would be leading in a public setting. It forced me to wrestle again with fears I thought I had conquered—fear of failure, fear of disappointing others, fear of losing my reputation (whatever that is).

As I stepped out of the safe little nest of our home, I realized how deeply rooted is my need to do all things well. Deeply rooted and crippling. Similar to old patterns, I found myself trying to shoulder the weight of the entire thing single-handedly.

We are not made to carry our burdens alone.

I finally asked some friends to intervene. I needed to get to the root of my stress—my fear that I won’t have what it takes and that people will walk away when I let them down.

(Out of curiosity, do you know anyone who is perfect? Me neither. In fact, the people who are closest to seeming perfect are the hardest ones to be around. Maybe because you know they can’t be real—you almost want to poke them with a stick to see if they flinch. Or maybe because the pressure they put on themselves to be so close to perfect makes you feel like I have to act more perfect to be in their presence. I don’t want to make anyone feel like that.)

Even though imperfect people are the ones I’m most drawn to, I still struggle to give myself permission to be an imperfect friend, an imperfect wife, and imperfect mom, an imperfect daughter, an imperfect sister, an imperfect leader. If grace really sticks to imperfections, I want to be less perfect and more grace-covered.

So my friends prayed for me. Several from far away, some from their own homes, and a couple right in the same room. They prayed prayers of love and life and hope and freedom from the lonely prison of perfectionism. And even more than anything they prayed for, I felt so incredibly loved that they showed up in that moment.

They wanted to walk with me through my messy parts that make me feel most unlovable. They didn’t have to, but they chose to be with me in my fear and failure and insecurity. They were willing to stop everything else to put their hearts and faith and our friendship on the line so that I would know I’m worth loving.

Talk about feeling vulnerable. To ask for help is one hard thing, but to actually receive it exactly where I was most weak, that took all the courage I could muster.

I don’t want to forget the power of being myself. Not the shinier version, or the skinnier version, or the funnier version, or the more together version. Not the more thoughtful version, or the version who always knows what to say. I want to be the truest version, mess and all.

Because the messy, imperfect, real-life version of myself is the one who most needs to be loved anyway. And that’s the version I want to use to love others in their mess. Hiding who we are is the loneliest way to live—and the only way to be fully loved is to be truly known.