“Be strong enough to admit your weaknesses. Be brave enough to show your fear. Be honest enough to confess the sham you’ve lived and all the masks you’ve been wearing. Love people as they are, not as you hope they will be. Let the love of Christ fill you and spill out into your world. Because His love alone can heal and make whole and set you free. His love alone can transform you into something like Himself” (Me, circa 2011).

I’m 98% certain I wrote those words, but I have no memory of the context of what I was thinking or feeling. I was definitely more in my head back then and a lot more fearful of what other people thought of me (or more accurately, what I thought other people thought of me). I probably scuttled a few relationships out of projecting my own self-rejection onto other people, but there were a few who were brave enough to look at me and see the diamond beneath all the coal.

I believe when someone is looking at you to see whether your Christ is real or not, what they want isn’t perfection but authenticity. They want real not religious. They need to know that someone like them who has messed up like them can find a new hope and a new direction. People need to know that they matter, that they are enough, that they can love and be loved.

Unfortunately, most look in all the wrong places, looking to broken cisterns for living water. Sometimes those people are the ones who have already found the true fountain, but they go back to busted wells because that’s what they know.

Honesty with yourself and God brings healing. Honesty with others brings restoration. Truth without love is worse than a lie but the truth spoken in love will set you free.