FAKE or Focused

I am blessed that my husband is my best friend.

He is the one that I WANT to tell everything. If something good happens, I want to tell him. If something bad happens, I want to tell him. If something strange, unexpected, funny, or even the most mundane happens, I want to tell him.

As we have shared life together for nearly 20 years and I having told him all these things for all these years, he knows me pretty well. He can tell when I am feeling FAKE. I honestly, can't be FAKE for him very long before he picks up on the fact that something is "off" and he asks me what is up. (Most often, he is afraid he's done something to cause my "off" attitude in reality has nothing to do with him at all.)

We can talk about my FAKE feelings and he can offer his advice, but even as great of a husband as he is, he can't make those FAKE feelings go away. He can listen and pray with me, but ultimately the only One who can eliminate the guilt, insecurity and inadequacies is God.

For me to look to my husband or any other relationship to combat my feeling FAKE, I have made an idol of that person.... I am asking and looking and hoping that they can do something only our Creator, Savior, Loving God can do.

I know this, yet, I VERY rarely tell Him how I feel no matter how I am feeling -FAKE or even just happy or sad. When something happens that evokes a strong reaction in my gut, He is sadly the last one I seem to turn to talk about it.

Why?

In my head, I know He loves me unconditionally. In my head, I know He is intimately involved in my life. In my head I know He wants me to come to Him with even the slightest details. In my head, I know He can more than handle my emotionally baggage.

But.... In my heart, Satan ruthlessly attacks my most vulnerable parts and turns my focus on to anything but Him.

Several ladies responded to my first blog post this week by commenting on here and on my Facebook page. Their comments were similar as they talked about what they allowed themselves to focus on when fighting the feeling of being FAKE. They each reminded me that when those feelings of being FAKE start to rise, I need to intentionally turn my attention back to Christ.

This really got me thinking . . . I was preparing to encourage you to pray for someone for you to be "real" with, when the Holy Spirit convicted me that He was the One we needed to be completely open with in the first place.  He is the One we need to tell everything, EVERYTHING.

Yes, sometimes it is the hardest to take off the mask when we come before our God. It is so easy to listen to Satan's lies about Him and ourselves, believing that He doesn't really care or that we can only come to Him when we have our junk completely together. Maybe we've been taught that we can only pray in the King James and that it would be sacrilegious for us to tell Him honestly how we feel.

Let's think about that for a minute.... If God made us and loves us and sent His Son to die for us.... If He is all-powerful, and all-knowing and everywhere at once..... Doesn't He already know the real us? Doesn't He already know how we feel? Doesn't His Word tell us over and over again to come to Him and talk to Him, confessing and receiving redemption and grace?

Only He can change our heart. Only He can transform our feelings. Only in finding our identity in Him are we able to stop feeling FAKE.

If we choose to keep our focus on our feelings, we will wallow there and those feelings will grow, poisoning our ministries, our families and even our own health.

If we take those feelings and confess them to God, learning to be transparent and real before Him, we can learn and grow and become more like Christ.... Then, and only then will we have the ability to take the risks and be real with others. That ability won't be of ourselves, it will be the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

So, dear readers.... a couple of closing thoughts....

1. Are you putting someone else in God's position in your life? Are you looking to or expecting some person to provide the friendship or the confidence or the healing that only God can provide?

2. If the answer to quit feeling FAKE is found in focusing on God, (which I believe it is) how do you do it? How do you do it and how do you maintain that focus on Him?

There are definitely times in my life where I do expect my hubby or one of my friends to fill that void. And there are definitely seasons in my life that are harder to keep my focus on Him. I do NOT have it altogether. I need your input, and I think it is safe to say others do too....

How do you go from feeling FAKE to finding focus?