What is authenticity these days? Some of todays most popular internet stars are accredited for their “total transparency” as they project their real feelings, photos, and often times real promotions to their audience. I don’t doubt their honesty but I do question their motivations at times. We started this internet craze all lying to each other…the pretending started on “Spacebook” (my moms indearing term for social media when they all blurred together for her years ago). MySpace was Fakebook 101. After a few years of realizing that surely we can’t all have these glorified lives we kept seeing and projecting online, people started getting real. I love real…Im so drawn to real, authentic, open booked souls. The issue now, for me at least, is that “real” started getting so much traction throughout the inter web that “real” began to sell…big time…and I guess it can be argued that any sort of self promotion whether it be true or not comes with such mixed intentions that by the time it hits our screens, true authenticity has been somewhat disparaged. Vulnerability has become so distorted over the last few years, that for me personally, it’s hard to know what is true verses what sells.
Even my own social media existence is a bit squandered looking at it now…I was selling my truth…I was marketing my hard work so that you would come join me…I was sharing my foster babies stories to crush you because it crushed me, and I needed you to see that…my intentions were more than just expressing my true self, I wanted you to have pain every time I did because I wanted everyone to get off their asses and help me…but it was less advocating foster care and more *bare my burden. If I had been 100% transparent throughout this journey, truth be told, I would have confused the hell out of most of you and at times looked more jacked up than heroic.
I have a friend who adopted out of the foster care system a few years ago and as she had her own biological children following this adoption, the family formula became so discombobulated that she eventually had to find a new family for that sibling set…you can imagine the pressure of sharing your journey all this time and then having to do the unimaginable…how weird our world is now that we can no longer get by with just not addressing the painful elephant in the room? How was she and her husband going to look now to all those that have followed their foster care journey…how would they explain this to the online family and friends who only have seen their walk online? My friend had always been pretty real…just like me…we even shared the same hashtags showing #insidefostercare to the masses. But, like her, like all of us…it would be impossible to be 100% transparent when sharing our goings ons and it now seems a bit dangerous to think we can be. My friend lost friends, she had haters come out of the woodwork and overall, she had to deal with the extra burden of such ugliness while facing the truth her and her husband did not want to have to bare. Not one of her naysayers had stepped foot in her shoes for even a minute but judged her based on the overall image presented. They saw her heartbreaking decision as a discrepancy worthy of social exile. The truth, she and I both know however, is had her journey been head to toe completely, absolutely, totally transparent…people would know…they would understand her very difficult decision to give those kids up…they would feel such anguish in their friends despair…they would truly break knowing all the truth she could not share. Vulnerability comes at such a high cost that most of us will never be willing to go all the way with it but maybe being partially vulnerable is just as heavy when the shit does actually hit the fan…because it will…one way or another we all face plant to the ground with our hands tied behind our backs.
The first time an imperfect human being had the chance to be truly vulnerable, they ran and hid…its human nature to hide from being fully seen. People today are more anxious, depressed and suicidal more than ever before and maybe that has less to do with fake perfect lives posted online and more to do with the “real” ones…maybe its more of “if this is what everyone looks like naked, then Im never coming out from under this bush” type situation and the poor soul just goes farther and farther into their darkness unable to find anywhere safe to expose how they really see themselves.
It blows my mind that we now all walk around with our shiny bitten apple phones in the palm of our hands, hide ourselves more than ever before, and wonder why we all feel such heaviness.
“For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened (that is that you will have greater awareness), and you will be like God, knowing (the difference between) good and evil…”
“But the Lord God called out to Adam “Where are you?” He said “I heard the sound of You walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.” …God said “who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat?””
It can be confusing to live in a world where both the unrealistic and realistic seem, at least at times, completely unattainable. I think it’s healthy to remember that someone else’s raw may seem more photogenic than your own raw but at the core, its not the same thing otherwise you wouldn’t be seeing or hearing it through your screen…so its best not to subject ourselves to the comparison. In these modern times, people are forgetting that true authenticity is when you are able to open yourself to the core and look inside without running and seeking cover.
Do you think in Adam and God’s hide and go seek game that the creator God truly didn’t know where Adam and Eve were? Do you think God truly couldn’t find His first borns? God not only knew where they were hiding but He knew WHY they were hiding…and what I love about the conversation here between the first man and the one and only Jehovah God was He was being such a perfect father here…asking the questions for the children to hear their own answers to understand the lesson He was teaching them… “I told you that tree would bring death…I gave you all these other glorious trees but you wanted the one thing you couldn’t have…I knew what would be bad for you but you thought I was just trying to be be mean, when really it is because I loved you so much and wanted to protect you…do you know why you feel shame now…how you know now that you’re naked when you didn’t an hour ago when life was so sweet…you chose this and since I couldn’t keep you from yourself…I will send someone to rescue you…to rescue you all from yourselves…grace is coming so that your shame won’t own you any longer… kids, grace is coming.”
If you’re hiding today, I hope you know that He sees you and He’s calling you out into the openness of grace…leave your shame in the place you hid and walk in true authenticity.