Taking off the Mask

 I took a leap.

I jumped and took off the mask that I have been hiding behind. 

I admitted to people in my life that I suck. That my relationship with God sucks.

I have mentioned before that I am awful at maintaining relationships. If you are not in my day to day it is hard for me to keep you informed.

A lot of that is because I think you are busy with your own life, doing your own thing and you won't have time for me.

My relationship with God is like that a lot. 

He has A LOT going on for Him.  How am I to expect that He has time for me? 

So I just don't call. I don't text, I don't write letters. I still love Him and know that He loves me but that is about where our relationship ends.

But no one knows that this is how my relationship with God is. I hide behind the mask of being a leader, being a "good Christian" who has it all together.
But I don't know scripture. I can quote maybe a handful of verses. I don't know stories in the Bible outside of the classics. I am good at faking it. I know all the things to say to make it sound like I have it together.

I have been hiding

Hiding from God

Hiding from others

Hiding from myself.

It's not that I don't believe anymore. Because I do. I believe in Jesus Christ. I have seen and experienced God working in my life. It's just that I don't know that I can do it.

You know the phrase faking it til you make it. What if all I have been doing is faking it all along?

I can go through the motions especially when in front of people. I look like a "good Christian" but I don't really pray or read scripture, I just show up. 

I want to start over. I want to be honest. I don't want to pretend. Not hide behind some Christian image but be honest...

Yes I believe. No I don't do anything about it. I just show up.

A year in review

I decided to look back at previous posts on Twitter and Facebook before I wrote my 2013 end of year wrap up letter (not Christmas letter those are to hard to get out in time)

I was a little surprised about how some of  my prayers from the beginning of 2013, are the same prayers I am saying at the end of 2013. 

"If you pray for God to take away something because it isn't apart of His plan, dont be surprised when He takes it away." "#womendontloveamanwholovesothers"

When I turned 32 in the summer I remember making a list of all the things I was going to finally do. I am currently unable to find that list but I remember one of them being to see a counselor. To seek help for the things that have plagued my emotional and spiritual life for so long.  

When I finally made that decision this fall it wasn't because I had remembered this list. It was out of sheer desperation. It was a call for help that arouse out of meeting a man who was just as broken if not more broken than myself. It was me stating that I no longer wanted to be that hot headed woman who when faced with trials would ran away, who would start a fire just to make sure the other person ran first, so I could be the hurt one.

So I sought help.

 I now meet with a lovely professionally trained Christian woman roughly once a week. Usually it just involves me sitting there and telling her all the latest drama that arises from being in a relationship with a broken man. And her sitting there telling me that she is proud that I didn't cuss him out, and that I got out of the car and cried in the middle of a parking lot instead of crossing any lines. It's not so much that she has amazingly wise words to say, because often the things she says are common sense. But its common sense I need to hear. It's things that in my hot headed emotionally charged brain I often can't seem to get at. It's knowing that every week I have to sit across from her for an hour and tell her everything that has led me back to her couch. It's knowing that even when I am not praying for the "right" things, that she is praying for ALL things. 

This is not exactly where I planned this post to go. I planned on writing about how I once again am praying for God to take away things that aren't in His plan and realizing when He does that and move on. 

It was going to be about how I once wrote that the problems of our world revolve around shows like The Bachelor in which women let themselves fall for a guy who loves other women. 

It was going to be about how the year is spherical and we always circle back. 

Instead it became about how I no longer wish to do that. How I have made the decision to break the cycle. 

2014 will not end the way it started. 

2014 will be the year in which I and hopefully others, break the cycle and step out of old patterns and start making real changes in our lives. And if we need help to do it, we seek help.