~ Living Exposed ~

That look. That image. That place that shows the pain. In the eyes. In the lips. In the brow. It’s there. It can change so fast. It can expose better than anything else where we are. What is hidden becomes exposed by just this look. When hidden is where we want to stay we wear the mask. The protection. The problem is eventually we are exposed and the look comes out from under this false protection. This sense of thinking, of trying to escape the look underneath the camouflaging mask. Hidden feels safe. It feels like a false sense of security. Only that! False. Secret places have become over time a place I know I can easily escape to. I’ve learned to create this space with such ease. A pretty way. An attractive way. My secret of not exposing gives me at times a false exterior. Yet the hollowness within this shell carries with it an emptiness that causes sinking in the stomach and face exposure that blows my cover quickly. I’m not sure yet what creating these masks have accomplished for me. Thinking deeper, I really do know. You know. We all know what they do for us. They help us survive. They keep us moving forward in life. They keep a wall around our exterior that keeps the unwanted out. That keeps the ugly deeply hidden, pushed down and swept under.

If we lived in a way to stop this mask living, the “secret places left untouched” life. Would our faces expose a look of such intense freedom? Would they bring us a youthfulness that creates that inner beauty we long to have all over us? Could we then just share out loud our suffering moments? Our pain that comes while simply living this life? Wouldn’t that be such an amazing, unentraped way to live out our existence to the world…to our mirror person? These all seem like…when read out loud…easy to do things. Yet, I know because of painful journeys these ways of hoping for a mask lifted…a living of exposing our raw self places…in all reality these are not so easy to put into place.

With exposing…with walking in freedom…with coming out from behind the wall…with undoing the secret…taking a journey away from its trap, I have now found a new strength within myself that even I can’t fully see yet. Others see it in me…I’m proud of that. I am seeing it slowly…I’m seeing it in waves…I’m feeling its healing. We all have this ability to walk in freedom to expose the pushed away pain. To step away from secret places. To stop hiding behind a made up mask.

My challenge to myself is to…Live Exposed. Live so no secrets can imbed themselves in me ever again. Live showing others that by walking out from behind the walls I choose to live a life filled with victories….with fullness of joy. Will these “pain looks” come? Yes!! Will I fall back into pushing things deep? Yes!! Will I make my life look beautiful in the midst of intense pain? Yes!! But…I now know how to get out…I now know how to run from the mask…I now know how to reach out for help…I now know I have a choice…I now know I have what I always have had…Strength that is God given. Strength that lives deeper than any pain I can push down. Within these places is more intense strength than I ever knew could exist inside my soul.

You…you have these same choices. You have these same abilities. You have these same places to gain a victory from. Use what God has given you to push…to remove…to overcome…to move forward and away from a life lived with masks…secrets. Live loving…love living….I want this for my life…I want this for you.