"I've led a double life."

I’m quickly learning the hard way that duplicity is life’s road sign for DEAD END AHEAD.

If you want to wind up in a dead end spiritually, physically, relationally, or emotionally speaking: make sure you have yourself so tied up in your different “personas” that you can’t take two steps forward without the paranoia of someone catching you off-guard. Have lots of groups of friends—your church friends, your drunk-night friends, your intellectual friends, the list goes on—and make sure that those groups never meet. Make sure to avoid at all costs, for example, your church friends catching you blending in far too convincingly with your atheist friends; make sure your intellectual friends never catch you planning your next wasted night via text message with the drunk-night friends; and for God’s sake don’t let your parents know that you are living with your boyfriend. And, of course, keep all these things secret for the sake of your friends’/family’s convenience and ultimate happiness, not because of your overwhelming compulsion to conceal your double {triple, or quadruple}-life. Yeah, give this plan a try and in 4 weeks you will undoubtedly be facing at least one dead end in life.

I’ve done all these things. I had a different outfit, hairstyle, hobby, and vocabulary for every group of friends I knew. I was really good at fitting in with all of them, and I liked losing myself in the people around me. Sure, I had to become really good at lying in order to pull off all my different roles—you know, to explain to my oldest friends who knew me the best that I really wasn’t spending too much time with that boy {that I probably shouldn’t have been dating anyway}. It didn’t matter because I could walk that bull$hit line so well that no one every truly caught me in my own mess.

Then one day, tired of my own games, I remembered God. More accurately, God’s Holy Spirit reminded me of His eternal witness of my life. The things hidden from everyone else in my life were in His plain sight. He said, “Kayla, I know.” It happened over a year ago and was so painful that I knew my games were done. First, God began teaching me my identity in Him. Then, He held up all of my different “masks” against His truth and together we sorted out the ones that didn’t honor Him. In all honesty, it meant ending some relationships with absolutely no explanation on my part. And I’m still working on untangling myself from the mess I created, a year later.

It is so peaceful to not have to juggle my life. Now, sometimes I see that people {who I could have impressed in the past} don’t find me interesting or impressive or worth their time. Yet some people do like who I am—who I am ALL the time—and those authentic relationships more than exceed any fabricated mess I could have made. That freedom is so sweet.