Overcoming Restlessness: Unmasking Your Truest Self

Deep inside, where no one can see, where I seldom go myself, is a restlessness.

It’s been years of ignoring it, by doing more and living for approval and recognition rather than living out my truest self.

Maybe the one thing holding you back from being your truest self isn’t living for approval or recognition. Perhaps it’s past hurts. Or the fear of failure. Or maybe it’s shame or self-doubt. With a little reflection, most of us are wearing a mask to avoid vulnerability and further hurt. These masks prevent us from living our truest selves. Numbing the restlessness.

You’d think I knew I was wearing a mask for all these years. I didn’t. I like to call it the “try-harder mask.” It became more and more apart of my false self. See, I’m the girl who is good at distracting herself with Bible studies, volunteering, blogging, and running a women’s ministry, for Pete’s sake.

Living from a Place of Fear, Rather Than Love. 

Having no idea how to live loved I would quote verses on how God loved me, all the while working for His approval. I thought for sure one day the ache and restlessness would finally go away and my life and all the daily activities would amount to something, but instead, I felt wounded and tired.

Very. Very. Tired.

Tired of trying to measure up.

I was still striving.

There’s a Restlessness in All of Us

My story is really every women’s story. Because every woman deep down has a hunger for more than coping and surviving. Every woman not only dreams big dreams but with God’s help, longs to fulfill those dreams.

Our restlessness for more is an invitation from God, and we can’t ignore it any longer. When we’re not living out our truest self, there will always be a restlessness.

Because the thing is: Our destination can’t be something, it has to be someone.

And that someone is Jesus.

The words of David Brenner in The Gift of Being Yourself ring so real, “as we become more and more like Christ we become uniquely our true self.”

The parenting fails, the burnt supper, the broken relationship, the loss of temper, the need for approval, the job which slipped through your hands—can’t define you. There only symptoms of a more profound need. We so quickly forget our worth does not come from what we do, but who we are.

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” Brennan Manning.

Jesus Invites Us to Live From His Love

Because He created us He knows the difficulty of letting go of our masks of self-doubt, fear, shame, and feeling of not-enough. He knows our need for control and how we self-protect. This is why the recordings of Jesus’ transforming love in the Bible serve as an invitation for us today.  The woman caught in adultery invites us to throw down our masks and live from His love.

According to John 8:1-11, one day in the temple, the religious leaders drag a woman caught in adultery before Jesus. While they quote the law, she most likely stood half-clothed, with her head hanging low, “Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such things should be stoned.” 

 I can only imagine how she felt, shame and condemnation covering her like a dense haze on a warm summer night, unable to look anyone in the eye.

Jesus says those without sin cast the first stone. Those who have it all together, you stone her. Go ahead.

Jesus does the unthinkable and stoops down to write something in the dirt. What he writes is a mystery, though many theologians have their ideas. Some say Jesus wrote the names of the accusers and others say He may have written the accusers’ sin. I wonder, as I heard a pastor once preach, if He stooped down just to be able to look into her eyes to say, “It’s ok, my daughter. I love you” Whatever He wrote, the real beauty of the story is: he never condemned her. He never told her to work harder.

The Love Affair

Encountering something she had never experienced before, love and acceptance, she leaves her mask of shame and guilt behind as  Jesus says to her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go from now on do not sin anymore.” John 8:11

Just like the woman caught in adultery, Jesus sees us through the eyes of love. see Colossians 1:22

All this restlessness and mask-wearing has nothing to do with what we do or not do, but rather with how loved we live. Nothing we can do can make us more loved and accepted than at this moment.

Because we are entirely loved, we should live entirely loved.

God’s love not only exposes our masks, but it produces change…

I’m learning we can either be broken by fear and shame or fully made whole by his love. That’s all there is.

Finding and living out our truest selves is a lifelong journey it is not something that happens overnight. It can’t be found in what we do or defined by past mistakes. It’s found only in Christ. There’s no formula, no three-step process, or checklist to unmasking your truest self. We have to learn to listen to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit and learn to simply be.

The moments when we are still before God awaken us to the reality of His love revealing our most authentic selves; the person he created us to be.

When we make room to just be and let go of our preconceived ideas of what this Christian journey should look like, we step into a beautiful journey with Christ.

Maybe, like me, you’re tired. Very, very tired of wearing a mask. Maybe, like me, your ready to live from a place of love rather than fear and begin to experience your truest self in Christ.

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