Are You Living the Lie?

You’re sipping your morning coffee reverently when the phone rings. It’s your mother-in-law calling to say she’s coming for a weeklong visit–tomorrow. You continue to hold the phone to your ear, but her words stop registering as you look around your house. The dust has built up on the baseboards. Papers lie in stacks on counters. You suddenly remember your toddler was eating an apple but never gave you the core, leading you to start searching for it as if it is forensic evidence. What is this sticky spot on the floor? How long has it been there? And just how much fur can that dog possibly shed? Panic ensues. You get off the phone and immediately begin to do what my family calls “living the lie.”

When I was an overly dramatic and chore-averse teenager, my parents would make us deep clean the house when company was coming to stay with us. One afternoon as I wiped baseboards and walls in the stairwell, preparing for my grandparents’ visit, I threw down my dust rag with gusto and announced, “This is crazy! We are living a lie!” My family laughs about my outburst now, and we always call each other a few days before a visit to see if the host is “living the lie” yet.

Living the lie has been an inside joke with my family for over twenty years. This story is funny, but it does have a bit of darkness to it. We do our best to hide our messes from others, whether those messes are physical, emotional, or spiritual. We stuff mistakes and sins from our past into deep recesses we hope others will never see. We hide depression and anger behind plastered-on smiles as we walk through the doors of our churches. We pretend to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps while grief continues to eat us alive.

Living the lie is hurting the church.

When we see only happy faces all around us, we feel we can’t trust anyone with our hurts. When the lives of others look perfect, we cover up our shame, praying no one will ever find it. Worse, we try to hide our brokenness from God even though we know he sees all things.

It’s time to stop faking it, to start naming our hardships and owning our messes. Jesus said he came like a doctor to heal the sick (Luke 5:31). We are all desperately ill and in need of his healing, and the first step is being brave enough to let our mess into the light by confessing it first to God and then to others.

The Samaritan woman at the well spotlighted her mess when she confessed to living with a man. At first she didn’t know she was baring her sin to God, but she quickly realized it when Jesus told her of her past and present sin (John 4:17–26). She became an instant evangelist, spreading the good news to her people. “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did,” she said (v. 29). Like this woman, we will find freedom when we acknowledge to God the struggles in our lives he already sees.

We free others when we let them see the mess Jesus sits in with us and gives us the power to overcome. [Tweet “We will find freedom when we acknowledge to God the struggles in our lives he already sees.”]

If you make one resolution this year, I hope it’s to live a life free of lies. Confess your mess to God, and ask for his healing. Find strength in numbers by sharing vulnerably in a safe community. Then help others find the freedom you’ve found in the One who sees all our messes and went to the cross so we can be clean.

Lindsay Hufford is a writer, slow marathoner, home educator and mediocre knitter. Her favorite things include books, kombucha, kitchen dancing, natural wellness, Jesus, and nachos. She spends days with her handsome hubby, three adorable kids, a flock of hens, a wandering barn cat, and a rescue dog. Lindsay blogs at www.lindsayhufford.com.

Photograph © Pietra Schwarzler, used with permission