I wake up and I’m tired. It’s a tired I’m familiar with, but yet uncomfortable.
Rolling out of bed and sleepily making my way to the coffee pot (sure love hubby for making that early morning coffee), I sense the heaviness. It’s a heaviness that has grown and lingered. It’s a heaviness I carried around and refused to address.
It’s the burden of trying to please everyone else by pretending you can.
As moms, leaders, writers, bosses, employees, and artist we can do what it takes to accomplish the responsibilities at hand before us. We step in to the role boldly trying to move the agenda ahead. But at the end of the day after a long busy season we realize that all we are doing is not what we are called to do. We’re pretending to be somebody we’re not.
Sometimes when we pretend we can do it all we are actually keeping someone else from stepping into the role they were created and gifted for.
God gifts each one of us so uniquely. That unique gifting is what He expects you to use. He doesn’t want you to pretend you have different gifts. He doesn’t need you to switch gifts with another. No, He needs you to step out boldly with your gifting in the area He has called you.
Why do we pretend?
I think we pretend because we don’t want others to be let down and so we’ll measure up. Maybe even sometimes our pride sneaks in and helps us wear the mask of another well. And yet at times we can even enjoy the role of filling a responsibility that is needed. But pretending — it doesn’t help. It doesn’t grow others. It doesn’t grow us because we are . . . pretending!
Pretending seems to weave itself through my life. Pretending is tiring, but I feel freedom swooping through my soul as I return to my gifts, my calling, His way.
Check back tomorrow to see how I pretended when I was younger. I’ll be writing a letter to my teenage self and that’s where I learned to pretend very well. Would you like to join me in freeing your once young self? Read more about how to participate by clicking here.
Are you pretending? Is it wearing you out?
Linking up over at Ann’s Holy Experience, Intentional Me, and Getting Down with Jesus. Come visit, won’t you. Let’s talk about the habits of letting go.
