". . . real is the best pretty because it doesn’t ask you to lie."

A thought by Lisa Whittle from her book, Jesus Over Everything (p. 38). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.)

That is a tremendous thought.

Lisa says, "I didn’t know how to be me because I misunderstood the process of becoming. Too often the unfinished us is blind to what the Spirit-shaped us can be over time. Lies have felt true, damning, and permanent. We aren’t weak for falling for them. We are human. But we need to put the truth of Jesus over them now."

She goes on, "I don’t want you to go on believing any untrue things, like I have, so let me say it to you: real is the best pretty because it doesn’t ask you to lie. Besides the fact that Jesus created us to be the real us, things get complicated when we try to live our life making it all look pretty; it’s exhausting and discouraging to the rest of us who need someone . . . to be real—about how hard the cancer is—about how adoptions aren’t all roses even though we adore those babies, about how sometimes we don’t want to put a bow on the end of our doubt or lament."

She continues, "It is hard as humans not to want to put our best faces forward, but it’s far harder to spend a lifetime (or any amount of time) in pursuit of being loved and wanted for how we appear. I have lived long enough to learn this the hard way: if the goal in life is to be liked and accepted by everyone, welcome to a life of exhaustion. There might be nothing more detrimental to a soul (think: a deadly over) than daily overanalyzing how we appear to others and overworking to control it. Choosing real over pretty is choosing to free our souls from the grip of an overfocus on self—something that is the root cause of most of our distresses."

She then says, "It also frees us to do what God created us to do—be who He created us to be, and this is our number-one lifework. Chasing pretty—curating a life appealing to everyone else—is at odds with why we are even here. I suspect this is why a lot of us stay wildly unfulfilled. We feel cornered into a contrived, half-baked, or even false persona we must keep up. What an exhausting way to live. It is the life of complication. Being real is a gift we give to others, yes, but it is also a gift we give ourselves. It releases us to be simple. We get to be who we are."

And that is a tremendous gift we need to give ourselves, isn't it?

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