letting go of the masks

I still remember it like it was just the other day and yet, it was years ago. I was a young mom, with just my three little girls {now, I’m the mom to seven — we’ve added four boys}, and me walking into a new church, into a new women’s Bible study, into a room full of women. Me from Minnesota, living in California, and feeling very much vulnerable.

I stood in the corner, surveyed the room, looked at all the beautiful women, and thought to myself how I really probably should have just stayed home today. This was too hard. At that moment, a kind man who was helping coordinate gestured me to a table. The one table, in my brief surveying glance of the room, that I had decided that I didn’t want to sit at. I made judgements — they all looked too good, had so much money, and I for sure wouldn’t fit in.

I shuffled to my chair, and mumbled my quick hello. Well, let me tell you, when you sit at a table in Southern California and you speak with your Minnesotan accent {dontcha know} you do get noticed. So I started to share, just a bit about me. Surface stuff. But really, I hid. Behind a mask. I was too afraid to let them know about me, or my life, or my faith, or my journey. Week after week after week it was the same.

Until one day, one day when my heart was so heavy, one day when I cried.

I could no longer carry that mask of having everything together. The mask came dropping down, to the floor and shattered in front of all these women in a thousand pieces. Tears rolled down my face and sobs ensued. And those women, the women at my table put down their masks as well. One after another after another. I remember them gathering around and then gathering me in their arms. I remember one of them holding my hand, and another helping with my children.

I was real. And in that moment of realness it gave permission for those sitting at my table in the far left corner of the sanctuary to be real. From that day on, I remember that there were no more masks in that small group. Behind each of those women, those friends of mine, there was a story. And often that story was of a life that really wasn’t perfect. But, we didn’t care. We were real.

We cared more about the heart than having a life that was perfectly put together.

So, my friends, can I challenge you to let go of those masks? Just for a bit? When we can be real, we can grow and encourage one another. It has been nine years since that day when I walked in that church of women. That table, that group of women changed me — they pushed in me a desire to be authentic, and real, and to let go of those masks that us women love to carry. Letting go brings freedom.

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. 2 Timothy 1:7