honesty & hypocrisy.

Sometimes I feel like the biggest hypocrite in the world.

I have a reputation for being "real." Frequent readers of my (other, semi-anonymous) blog tell me how great it is to see someone being super-duper honest about all of the hard things in life. After I spoke at stake conference a couple of months ago, I was stopped by everyone and their brothers and sisters (see what I did there?) to be told how great it is that I was so honest and real. My two best friends in college sometimes complained about how hard it is to get me to lie about anything, even for a good cause (i.e. a successful prank).

I L O V E that reputation. Being known for being the honest one, the one who will tell it to you straight, the one who isn't afraid to tell her story... it can be pretty great sometimes.

The thing is, I don't feel that honest. There are so many things that I've only talked about with my closest friends, Heavenly Father, my priesthood leaders, and/or my cat. (Okay, not so much the cat... she has a big mouth.) Just like anyone else, I have secrets. There are things that are way too personal to share. There are many things that I'm way too ashamed of to tell, and other things I keep to myself because I worry about how they would make other people feel.

Despite what sometimes seems like a huge amount of honesty and realness, I feel as though everything I present to the world is incredibly sanitized. Sure, I'll give a sacrament talk about the struggle of coming to terms with my disability. My struggle with mental illness throughout my teenage years is fair game too. You want to hear about a really bad decision I made and how the atonement helped me fix it? I've got just the story for you. But you want me to talk about what I'm going through right now? You want to hear the stories that I haven't figured out how to wrap up in a bow? Um, I think I hear my cat calling for me.


I don't want to be a hypocrite. I know that some of my friends, reading this blog, might think that I am. Sometimes I let the little devil on my shoulder tell me that I'm just another one of those hypocritical Christians, talking on and on about the gospel while few people know what's behind the curtain. I used to hate those people.

I've realized that sometimes it's okay to keep things between myself and God. Y'all don't need to know everything. I don't have to share the things closest to my heart until I'm ready, and I don't have to put a disclaimer on my blog in flashing neon lights that says "HEY, I'M A SINNER TOO." If it benefits someone individually to know about a sin I've committed in the past or something crappy that's happened to me, I freely tell it. I'm really good at that. Someday maybe I'll be ready to tell those things to the world in a way that glorifies God and doesn't totally humiliate me. ;) But today isn't that day, and that's okay.

What I do want you to know right now:

I'm not perfect, and I don't want to pretend to be. I've made some pretty huge mistakes, and I've done things that have hurt people badly, things that I on my own could never fix. Every day, I feel unworthy of the blessings in my life and especially the opportunity to someday stand in my Father's presence. I'm absolutely blown away by a God who loves me enough to keep on forgiving me and welcoming me back despite all of the mistakes that I make. I'm not a perfect disciple, sometimes not even a good one. But I've been blessed by a perfect Savior and a perfect gospel, and regardless of my own hidden sorrows and guilt, I refuse to stop talking about Him and telling others what He's done for me.

hy·poc·ri·sy noun the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform

I believe that I should be better than I am, and I encourage myself and others to reach towards a goal that we can't possibly achieve without divine intervention. If that makes me a hypocrite, that's exactly what I am.

I guess I can live with that.