Take Off the Mask

“Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of your happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” James 5:13-16

There’s this old saying, “fake it till you make it.” I used to practice this. Pretending to be confident so that others wouldn’t see how petrified I was about doing and trying new things. Then I realized I was doing it wrong. How many of you know that the practice of faking it till you make it, isn’t about just pretending to be confident, but about “tricking” yourself into confidence? It’s about speaking the positive affirmation into your life until it actually exists. At first, I definitely didn’t. I thought I could hide my fears behind fake confidence and people wouldn’t be able to take advantage of my weaknesses if they weren’t visible.

Do you know that Confidence isn’t the only emotion we fake? We often fake Happiness in times where Sorrow, Fear, or Anger is appropriate. Why is that? Is it because of songs like Put On A Happy Face and If You Just Smile telling us that there’s no reason to ever be Sad so fake it till you make it? Is it because we’ve been conditioned not to cry because it’s a sign of weakness? Or maybe it’s because we’re afraid of what it means for people to know what anything other than Happy looks like with us? Because people can’t handle the “weaker” sides of us? What if I was to tell you that by faking Happiness, we weaken its position in our lives?

I love the movie Inside Out. Disney did a great job of capturing the way our emotions work together to keep us together, and shows us what happens when our minds and bodies start changing and need to feel and express different things in different ways. If you’ve seen the movie, I want you to think about the character Joy. Joy puts in a lot of effort to keep Riley “together.” She works overtime to make sure she’s happy at whatever cost, so much so that she ends up losing her spot at the forefront of Riley’s mind and on this long, fantastical journey with Sadness to get Riley and her memories back in order. If you haven’t see the movie, you definitely should. But I bring up these characters because Joy didn’t understand what it meant to let Sadness, or Disgust, or Anger or Fear take center stage in a person’s life. She thought her purpose was to always be there and to be the solution to ever problem. So much so, she figuratively “burned out” and the other emotions were left to figure things out.

As adults, we have conditioned ourselves to do this. We force Happiness to the front of everything that others around us don’t know how to treat us. They don’t know what we look like when we’re sad, or frustrated or scared and sometimes neither do we. We end up giving ourselves extra anxiety, panic, ulcers and worse conditions because we forever wear the mask of a smile. I’m here to encourage you NOT to do that. Don’t diminish your true Happy self by making it a fakeness you wear to disguise the real you from the world. Let the world see you. Let the world know who you really are so they can accept it.

The bible encourages us to be authentic. It says “Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of your happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” (James 5:13-16) James wrote these words a a blueprint to help people deal with whatever was ailing them, and at no point does he say when things are bad pretend like they aren’t. He says we should seek solace in God, giving our burdens to Him, and to ask for the help of others to see you through the hardships. God gave us these emotions to feel them, not hide them, and definitely not to burn through the one that makes us feel the best.

Happiness is a gift that we’re born with. It is innocent, and pure, and light, and makes us feel amazing. Happiness isn’t supposed to ever make us feel worse or like work. So take off the mask and feel what you feel, authentically. That way, when you smile, it comes from a real place and you never have to regret it. Keep smiling, but only if you mean it :-).