Living in Disneyland

I am tired.

I am so emotionally tired right now that my body just wants to collapse. This week has been tough so far. Our topic is “identity”- not easy stuff. We have been talking a lot about the masks we put on and the ways we are just living up to the identities that other people have given us. We have seen a vulnerability to us all that we haven’t seen yet. We all made masks and decorated them however we wanted- no directions at all. Yet even though we all said we didn’t think much about how we painted our masks and didn’t paint them to represent us, it was amazing to see how they all really showed the masks that we put on for others. We all were made to sit in the “hot seat” at the front of the room while our speaker asked us question after question about why we painted each thing and how it represents us…very convicting and hard. Today we sat outside in a circle- not having class- because our speaker refused to go any further with us unless we would open up ourselves and share why we are so afraid to speak out in our group. We are a group filled with fears and with walls built very high around us. So after sitting in awkward silence for a long time- we opened up. And it was good J Things aren’t automatically perfect but they are better and they are on the journey even more now to a stronger family. But the questions of who we all are are still here.

So usually I don’t put just one day up at a time but I just felt like asking you all-

Who are you?

What is your true identity- after the mask is taken off and the walls are broken down?

Our speaker has given us the metaphor of Disneyland- we have all the great, exciting, fun, and almost perfect appearance on the outside but on the inside of it all is the cheap, plastic, and hollow truth. What is your Disneyland?

I am struggling right now with these questions…we all have been told lies and “It doesn’t matter if a lie is true- what matters is if we believe it or not.” What lie are you believing right now and building your identity around?