There comes a time when the make-believe begins to shatter, and the soul awakens beneath it. You reach the end of yourself, exhausted from holding together the person you’ve tried so hard to be. Left with nothing but God, you begin to see what all that pretending has cost you.
I would say I spent fifty of my fifty-eight years asleep to much of my own life. Living through ego, presenting an image, calling out to the world: Look at me. I’m important. Please pay attention.
I cringe when I remember how often I sought that attention through offense or negative behavior. Political grandstanding. Irreverent language meant to put someone on their heels. Taking a shot at something another person believed in just to provoke a response.
Come this way. Let’s wallow in the mud of bullshit. Let’s fight about the meaningless. Let’s argue until neither of us remembers what we hoped to accomplish.
And for what? A fleeting feeling of control, followed by an emptiness deeper than the one I started with.
I won’t pretend I’ve outgrown it all. I still catch myself trying to convince the world I matter. Talking too much. Oversharing. Filling the silence, hoping something I say will make someone like me.
Even now, awareness sometimes arrives only after the words have left my mouth. But I’m learning to notice. I’m learning to pause. And I’m learning to meet that part of myself with honesty and compassion.
It’s exhausting to consider how much energy I’ve spent trying to earn what God has already given me. His love has been present through every performance, every failure, every desperate attempt to be somebody.
Sometimes I need to speak plainly to myself:
Johnny Boy, you’re trying so hard to be cool. You can put that down now. You are loved. You are complete. Take a breath and let that be enough.
Enjoy what you see. Observe without absorbing everything around you. Let someone disagree without preparing your defense. Allow a quiet moment to remain quiet. Simply be there.
Listen long enough to hear what someone is struggling to say. Be present for the soul before you, the person who may be longing for someone to give them a little time and attention. Look into their eyes. Let your patience tell them they matter. Let your presence express a love that needs no announcement.
Perhaps this is where the awakening begins to change how we live: in the moment we stop rehearsing what we’ll say next and truly hear another person.
There comes a time when you grow tired of asking the world to look at you.
And you begin to pray, God, help me see who needs Your love today.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
— Philippians 2:3–4 (NIV)
