What is most “real” in your life? It’s an odd question, prompted by a chapter I was reading yesterday from “Sacred Rhythms” written by Ruth Haley Barton. I think perhaps what she is asking is, deep down, when you’re being the most honest with yourself, what is most important. It’s the being honest part that gets me, because too often we feel one thing, say another, and do something else entirely.
Barton writes: “One of the most important lessons I have learned … is how important it is to have time and space for being with what’s real in my life—to celebrate the joys, grieve the losses, shed my tears, sit with the questions, feel my anger, attend to my loneliness…it means allowing God to be with me in that place and waiting for him to do what is needed … Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you.”
That’s a challenging thought.
What is the truest thing about you?
Is it your successes? Failures? Fears? Responsibilities? Is it the labels you’ve accumulated over the years (parent, grandparent, spouse, hard worker, stubborn, opinionated, driven, and on and on)?
Or is it really that, beneath all the noise, there is still a soul that longs for more of God?
I think we spend a lot of energy trying to convince ourselves, and everyone else, that we’re doing just fine. We answer, “I’m good,” when we’re exhausted. We smile when our hearts are breaking. We keep moving because stopping might force us to face what’s really going on inside.
The beautiful thing about God is that He never asks us to pretend.
The Psalms are full of people who celebrated, questioned, rejoiced, doubted, confessed, lamented, got angry, and worshiped. They brought it all before God because they knew there was no point in hiding what God already knew.
Perhaps that’s what spiritual maturity looks like: not pretending we have it all together, but being honest with ourselves and with the One who holds us together.
So today, ask yourself that odd question: What is most real in your life?
Whatever rises to the surface, don’t push it away or polish it. Don’t edit it into something more “acceptable.”
Sit with it. Be honest with yourself. Bring it to God.
Because if Ruth Haley Barton is right, beneath everything else is a deeper truth … and it might just be the truest thing about you.
Have a blessed day.
