Confession and other silly feelings

I did something today that I was quite nervous to do.  I told my pastor that I thought he was cool.  It was actually a confession, even though it seems simple and silly.  I have been lugging this admiration around for months. 

If you've read any of my previous blogs you'll uncover that I have spent a lot of this past year trying to impress people, trying to be what they wanted me to be so I'd be "in."  So in my thinking my pastor was cool, I've been trying to be low key, act like it's not exciting to me when he sees me at church and says hello.  But out of that I haven't quite been myself.  Normally I am pretty dorky and love to joke with people when I see them.  With Michael, I get quiet.  My husband laughs at me and so do my friends because they all know that I kind of want to be just like him. 

In our Lenten series, our pastors have talked about confession and being able to be fully ourselves.  Then I started thinking that Michael would never get to see the real me and that made me sad because I think he'd really like me.  Not this girl who wanted to say and do the right things around him and act like she didn't care whether or not she was acknowledged.  I think I'd be funny to him just like I am to my friends.  They love me so why am I so afraid to be myself?

So I confessed to Michael, just to get it off of my chest and say, "I haven't been myself and I want to free me from that."  It seemed silly and I don't even know what I said anymore but I feel a weight lifted.  Now I can be myself without wanting to be Michael.  I can just thank God for the giftings he's given Michael and how they've spoke to me and I can just admit my own silliness. 

Maybe I'll feel some embarrassment for this all later but I don't really care.  The reason I have three of my very best friends was because I just laid it all out.  I said, "I want to be your friend."  No honestly, that's verbatim.  Sometimes people don't need the mess we make of things, sometimes they just need a clear picture of how we feel.  This year, I'm just going to continue to live in who God made me to be and constantly hang on his every word to help me even more fully enter that.  I consider myself incredibly blessed for the group of people that I call friends and for a community led by people who want us to be fully ourselves.  Not everyone gets that side of God but I'm going to try to change that.