true.

{“where i create, there i am true” ~rilke | © jan avellana, 2016 }

what does it mean to be true?

with so much going on in the world today, one of the questions i am asking myself is what it means to be the kind of person that is full of love and kindness. true love and kindness, and not what masquerades as these character traits—you know, just for the sake of looking good. i mean how do i go about the business of actually BEING good, you know? cause the world needs goodness, for true reals.

and what i keep coming back to is that from the start, i have to be honest, real, authentic, loyal…in other words i have to be true. not only to others and of course to God, but first to myself. because how can i love anyone if i am not first true to myself?

and maybe that’s part of where the wretch in the world starts, i’m thinking. because imagine this, if over time we learn how to betray ourselves—by justifying the lies we tell ourselves, by not being honest to the bones about who we really are, about what we really think and feel—all for the sake of looking good/so we fit in/so people will like us or to avoid punishment of some sort, if we are willing to so easily betray ourselves, how hard is it then dear ones to betray others in untrueness? and so much of what i see and hear these days are so, so, SO full of things that are NOT TRUE.

can i get an amen?! 

but what’s one girl to do about the world’s ugliness and the times we are living in? for starters, we begin.

and then imagine if it isn’t just one girl. imagine instead that it’s a thousand girls? imagine then, one million girls starting with one true promise to themselves—no one else—that they are going to be true, with love and kindness.

so this is where i will start. with truth AND as pastor dale always says, kindness. by being truer to myself. by not lying to myself anymore about who i am, what i feel and what i think. i will start right now, to live even more fully into who God created me to be. i will speak my truth with kindness, and also without apology. and i will learn better to love myself true, so that i can in turn be truer to you and you, and you, and silly to say, because He knows everything already, but then also, i can be truer with God.

and this my friends, is where the revolution really begins. with truth and kindness. join me, will you? stay tuned…

xo,

jan

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" ~ luke 10:27

 

 

 

Comments

[Kelly]

Lovely! Thank you for your powerful and true words!