A Great Desire

I've been struggling over the past few months with the concept of authenticity. How much do you share, how real do you get with people, what is for private and what is for public? This isn't exactly a new concept or struggle in our society, but it seems to have been complicated or amplified since getting married.

Social Media portrays such an odd display of reality. From people that show only the highlight reel of their life to those who show their "struggle is real" photos that are just perfectly undone enough, the ability to observe someone's true life full of mess, pain, and struggle is rare.

I think many of us are scared. Scared that we are the only ones feeling this way, scared of what people would say or think if they knew what was really going on, scared that if we admitted we didn't have it all together, it would all fall apart. But where does that leave us? We have these social networks of close friends and families that we cannot share things with. We feel the need to add a preface of "I don't normally do this" or seriously reconsider ever sharing something deeply personal.

We sit in Sunday school classes and church services with our best-dressed selves and keeping up an image. We share prayer requests about family members and discuss the class subject matter but never going into deep detail about our own personal struggles. But why the heck not? The church should be the safest place for being broken, admitting our flaws or not measuring up, and yet it's the place we often feel we must be the most careful with how much we share.

I even see it here on the blogosphere. We share the "Christian" struggles of not being in the word enough, idolizing a clean house, not tithing every week. But rarely do we get down deep and into the nitty gritty.

So here is my great desire. To be truly authentic and forthcoming on this blog, to overcome the fear that I will be judged or criticized for the things I share on here. Because I believe that God has given me a voice and a heart for the hurting, struggling, alone. I don't believe that the things I struggle with in my life and in my marriage and the struggles P and I are facing are things that are unique to us alone.

So here is a bit of raw honesty:

1. I fear that I will fail to glorify God in my role as a wife. I grew up in the Disney princess era, where the girls always seemed to learn they didn't need saving and they could do it without a prince. I was fiercely independent and even prided myself on my self-reliance. I never felt the need for companionship, though at times I wanted it. Throughout engagement and especially after marriage, I have had to work hard to even accomplish small steps toward God's design for marriage and wifehood. He has taught me far more about His character and the places I need refinement in my character during marriage than I ever could have learned in singleness. But it is hard, and some days I fear undoing the progress and going back to stubbornly wanting to control everything in my time, my desire, my power, and my will. I fear we will grow complacent in living out our faith, content with semi-regular church and Sunday school attendance, praying before meals, and occasionally praying together. I fear the destruction of our marriage by not keeping God at the center or part of our triune.


2. Sometimes I miserably fail at cooking. Last night, I had a Pinterest fail. I normally only post my great triumphs and Insta-perfect plates, but in the spirit of real-ness, this is what my side dish for dinner looked like last night. I present the guaranteed crispy, oven-baked sweet potato fries:

It was horrible. We scraped the under-done fries off the pan and consumed the mush with our crab cakes because I didn't have another option. My grocery shopping was also a fail this week, and we are currently eating our way through the freezer/thanksgiving leftovers. My sweet husband is thankful for any food put in front of him and not harsh when I fail miserably in the kitchen. I'm the critic in the house for my own cooking.

3. I haven't sent out our thank you notes from our wedding gifts. Between moving, working two jobs, being in school part-time, and the fact that writing thank you notes is just not fun, we are really behind on getting them out. Yes, I know that my Miss Manners and Emily Post standards I have a year to send them out, but if you have met perfectionist me, I don't let things hang over me like this. It's embarrassing, but honestly, with finals and the holidays approaching, I'm not sure they will get done anytime soon (which is even worse).


I don't share these honest tidbits of life for pity or to get them off my chest. My hope is that it will start a ripple effect of comfortability for others to be authentic about their lives. We are not called to be islands, we are called "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." James 5:16 gives us an incredible reasoning for authenticity and the benefit from engaging in true community.