Just Being Me Is Enough

I’ve had a problem with just being me all my life.

I think all of us do.

We fear that the people that we want to love and accept us will instead judge us and reject us, so we try to figure out what kind of person they want us to be and we hide whatever part of us doesn’t fit the part. We inwardly conclude that simply being ourselves just can’t be enough.

What brought me face to face with this uncomfortable truth was a fantastic interview I listened to with Seth Godin, writer, entrepreneur and all around smart guy.  The interview was about the vital importance of putting out authentic creative work.  He related how he began writing on the internet beginning in 1990, and that daily blogging was the single most important thing he did.

Which made me remember what I used to do.

Eleven years ago I was blogging every day, putting out content that mattered, and built up a website of over 700 pages viewed over 200,000 times all over the world, and was regularly writing books that thousands of people read.

But then I started slowing down, and ended up stopping altogether.

When friends asked me why, I usually said something like “Oh, I’m in more of an input phase than an output phase right now.”

What I was afraid to say was that I was struggling with depression and despair because of a failed marriage and a spiritual crisis in my life. What I was afraid to say was that my soul was drying up, and so was the well of my creativity, but I was too afraid that my whole life would collapse if I let people see all the broken parts of me.

But in God’s time, He led me through a dark night of my soul, and through His grace, hours of counseling, and the love and support of many friends and loved ones, I have been healed and reborn.

But even now, except for a few short spurts, I still haven’t been writing and creating. And as I have said, listening to the Seth Godin interview (3 times, taking notes) made me face the harsh reality that I still haven’t been putting out my writing, and I faced the fact that I wasn’t doing it because of fear.  I’ve thought that I needed to come up with the right book idea, the right website, the right approach, the right persona— but all that posturing was really me trying to find a way that would impress people but keep them enough at arm’s length so that they couldn’t see all of me, and I wouldn’t have to risk them not liking what they saw.

In a way, I am still that little boy, trying to figure out what kind of role to play to make sure people like him, and afraid that just being himself isn’t enough.

And so, as I turned around in my head the idea of writing on a daily basis again, that fear raised up, and it taunted me “There’s no way you can get it right every day, there’s no way you can have this carefully polished persona if you put yourself out there every day. Really, now, Is just being me enough?”

Honestly, that was scary to think about.

I had to look deep in my soul, and really wrestle with it.

And I finally decided that, yes, it is.

Just being me is enough.

Warts and all, no fancy polish, no crafted persona, just me.

If just being me is enough for me, and enough for God, and enough for the people who truly love me, then it’s enough.

So here I am, getting back to daily writing again.

And just to make sure I get the message that just being me is enough, I’m going to put my daily writing on Facebook Live — where I really can’t refine or polish or even take back mistakes.

And it’s interesting, that I have a peace about giving this all into God’s hands and letting Him do what He wills with it.

And once I surrendered having to do any specific project or topic, but just be me, Spirit surprised me by giving me a structure for my daily snippets of my soul– to be able to sum up what God was speaking to me in simple phrases and call them #truthstarters, and posting them on Instagram and other social media.

So #truthstarters starts with this lesson that God needed to teach me, Just Being Me Is Enough.  I hope my words help you realize that just being you is enough too.

Help me share my message by liking and sharing. Thanks.