Do you ever feel like there are some parts of you that you need to conceal in order to appear to advantage?
I do.
Parts of my face, my body, my heart.

So many blemishes and flaws that I wish to hide as if tucking them away and keeping you at arms distance where I look my best will make them any less present. But the reality is that those parts of me are still there even when I fool you into thinking they aren’t.
Before you read any further, I have to give you fair warning; I am about to be totally honest and it may be…well, I’ll let you decide how it affects you when you get to the end.

The truth is, I like appearing perfect. Like I have it all together and have all the answers, but that is just a mask designed to veil the vulnerabilities and shortcomings which you would most certainly find if you were able to peel back the facade of perfection and gaze upon the real me. The imperfect me, the inadequate me, the broken me. 

We all have different masks that we wear. Each one of us is hiding behind something, using something to filter what gets out into the world, cropping away the pieces we don’t want others to know exist, but there is One who sees the original, no matter how many edits we apply.

Lately, God has shown me how distracted and distant my heart has been from Him. I simply got caught up in myself and in my desires to please myself. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at me because I have gotten so good at wearing the mask of religiosity that I even had myself deceived into thinking that my heart was right before God.

But it wasn’t. 

I had nipped and tucked so many pieces of myself, I had filtered out so much shadow and cropped out just enough imperfection so that all I saw was what I wanted to see, but God still saw the whole picture. For the last two years or so my thoughts have been consumed by dreams and wishes to one day get married. Don’t get me wrong, the desire to get married is healthy and natural, but it had become an idol in my heart, and God in His grace and mercy loves me (and you) too much to allow idols to remain standing.  It was a long, gentle process as God peeled back the layers of my heart and swept away all of the cleverly worded professions I hid my idolatry behind. I would say things that led others and myself to believe that my heart and devotion was immovably set upon Jesus alone, but in the dark, distant corners of my heart, there was a little piece of longing that betrayed me. It was obvious to Him that my devotion was divided and my attention bestowed elsewhere as I thought more about when God would bring a man into my life who would love me and sacrifice for me than I thought about the Man who loved me from eternity and sacrificed everything for me. 

Jesus is the One who knew me before I was yet born, saw me before I was yet washed, and loved me before I was yet lovable. He saw every single blemish and flaw that I try so desperately to mask and He died so that He could free me from them. 

He is the One my soul loves because He first loved my soul. And there is no earthly man who could ever love me as much as He loves me nor sacrifice as much as He sacrificed for me. Those pieces of my heart that for so long have been searching for satisfaction and fulfillment in a “soul mate” were believing a lie that somehow marriage is the absolute pinnacle of earthly bliss. But it’s not.

Finding your soul Maker, not your soul mate, is the apex of not only earthly, but heavenly ecstasy because as dirty, messed up, and broken as it is, He loves my soul.

He sees the full picture and claims me as His own prized possession so that I no longer have to hide. I can stand tall in the glorious cleansing that I have received from His sacrifice for me.

I have come to learn that my heart is truly deceitful above all things and that even I do not know it, but God knows it and He wants it for His very own. He gives me a new heart that beats for Him alone and though I still desire to be married one day, I have come to realize in my heart what I knew in my head all along; if Jesus is not the center and focus of my life, my earthly relationships will not function the way they should. The longing that I feel for companionship can really only be satisfied by Jesus. The thirst I feel for love is only quenched by His love for me. The ache I feel for validation was already provided for when He died on a Roman cross to win me for Himself. 

It is all Jesus, my friends.

I don’t know what each of you struggles with. I don’t know what idols you have standing in your heart. I don’t know where you are with the Lord today, but I know that He knows (even if you don’t). He sees you. He sees what you try to keep the rest of us from seeing and still He loves you. He wants to cure the imperfections, not just bury them beneath layers of deceit and willful ignorance. 

You don’t have to hide from Him.

He is gentle and in Him, you will find rest for your soul, the very soul that He loves.    The very soul that will love Him back if only you let it.