Behind the Mask

“From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off them. Stuart found he was good at math and science. He shut down his heart and spent all his energies perfecting his “Spock” persona. There in the academy, he was safe; he was also recognized and rewarded. Alex was good at sports and the whole macho image; he became a glass-eating animal. Stan became the nicest guy you could ever meet. “In the story of my life,” he admitted, “I want to be seen as the Nice Guy.” I became a hard-charging perfectionist; there, in my perfection, I found safety and recognition. “When I was eight,” confesses Brennan Manning, “the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered, ‘Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know.’” Notice the key phrase: “as a defense against pain,” as a way of saving himself. The impostor is our plan for salvation” – John Eldredge, Wild at Heart

Does reading that strike a chord in your heart? I know it does in mine. This describes so much of my past struggle, a struggle that God’s been faithful to help me through for the past ten years of my life, if not longer.

We’ve all heard people say that the most important thing in any conflict is to know your enemy. Whether it be a sports conflict or actual war, I’d say that’s a generally true statement. There’s probably a bit more to it than that, but for the most part if you understand your enemy you’ll find yourself in a good place. Well the same is true when we are in conflict with ourselves. As Eldredge states above, at some point in all of our lives we’ll be wounded. As we stand there in the midst of the pain the enemy visits us and presents us with the lie. The lie is simple, but oh so devastating. He tells us that all the pain we’re experiencing would leave, all of our deep unspoken desires would be fulfilled if we just became someone else. Usually we’re too young and naive to understand what’s happening so we embrace the lie. We put on someone else’s armor and present a false mask to all around us, hoping that it will save us. Unfortunately, what we believed would save us ultimately leads us into greater bondage.

Why? It’s because the false identity we create is incompatible with who we are at the core of our being; it stands in rebellion to who God created us to be and thus will never satisfy and never bring us what we desire.

This narrative permeates all aspects of media. Who’s the real person: Batman or Bruce Wayne? Our society praises those who wear masks, which is why masked heroes and the stories they are involved in continue to capture our imaginations (just look at the success of Marvel’s Daredevil on Netflix or the continual reboots of Batman and Spiderman); however, in the same breathe we also have an insatiable drive to find the man behind the mask, as if we know deep down that he’s the person who really matters. And that’s true, in fiction and in reality. We must never confuse the roles we play with who we are (more on that in my next post).

So how do we escape? If we truly are created to be someone different than who we’ve presented others for so many years how do we go back? How do we bring back the man or woman behind the mask?

First, we must acknowledge that we’re wearing a mask in the first place, which is easier said than done. Repentance (i.e., changing our mind and how we think) will only come if we understand what falsehood we believe and what the alternative truth is. This is why our second task is to ask God to reveal the difference between who we really are and who we’ve been pretending to be. He’s anxious and happy to do so. This is not a one and done event. It’s a process as God not only shows us who we’ve been pretending to be but also why we’ve been pretending to be them. This journey into the past can bring up painful memories but this is the path to restoration and healing. Finally, we must accept ourselves, our true selves. God has a glorious plan for each and every one of us and it is only by becoming who he created us to be that we’ll be able to accomplish the good works he designed for us.

Up to this point I’ve dealt mainly with the realm of ideas and principles. Now allow to me to go to the realm of experience because it is within our experience that God wants to encounter and dwell with us. I’ll do so by explaining my own experiences with the mask.

I can’t remember all of the events that led me to believe the lies that made up my personal mask, but I will try to recount them to the best of my ability. First off, I’ve spent the vast majority of my life joining preexisting communities and friendships (I’m even doing it now, as I transition to interning with Chi Alpha at UVA). Because I was always the new guy I’ve perpetually felt like an outsider, always feeling like I don’t belong. I knew many people who I got along with but I was always searching for that David/Jonathon relationship from the Bible and could never find it (to be honest, I still haven’t but I haven’t given up hope for it). On a slightly unrelated note, when I was in 5^th and 6^th grade I had to visit a speech therapist because I couldn’t pronounce the “r” sound correctly, especially when I got excited and started talking fast (which people tend to do when they get excited).

There are few things worse than being told you can’t talk properly (I can’t speak for everyone but it definitely tops wearing braces, which I also have experience with). In hindsight I’m extremely glad for those many, many speech lessons; however, back then they were a tremendous source of shame and actually caused me to embrace the role of outsider. I figured that as an outsider I’d interact with fewer people and thus be put in fewer embarrassing situations.

The final factor was my physical stature. I’ve never had the build that would lead someone to call me a “strapping, young lad”. From as far back as I can remember I wanted to be 6’3 and around 190 lbs, all muscle. Once I figured out that I’d never be the biggest guy on the block I knew I needed some other type of strength to give me some confidence and distinguish me from all the other guys in eyes of all the girls in the world. I settled for two things: strength of conviction and the appearance of the inner strength that comes from self-confidence (which I didn’t really have). And with that, my mask was complete.

Now, just to be clear, all of these conclusions probably took place before I turned 14 and were just continually solidified and built upon as time passed. I haven’t begun to see myself differently than this mask until this past year, and most of that growth has occurred in the past 6 months. In fact, even though I have started to see myself differently, I couldn’t have articulated what my mask was until two days ago, when God revealed it to me after I read the above quote by John Eldredge and did some journaling about it. Here’s what I wrote in those initial moments of reflection.

“The impostor, the false self, believed that strength was seen in silence, in mystery, in control. I thought that if I was aloof and mysterious people would think there was more to me than I believed at the time, that they’d take an interest in me and that girls would be attracted to me being a mild mannered man of mystery. He looks nice on the outside but is aloof enough that you imagine a danger hiding behind the surface. The truth is that there is danger, this is fight in me, but it’s not to be used for my own gain or manipulated; it’s to be used to fight for others. It doesn’t need to be flaunted. Also, what woman would trust her heart to a man whose heart she cannot see? To be fully myself, funny, warm, and endearing is to be vulnerable because it goes against everything I falsely believed girls wanted. It’s taking the mask off and saying, ‘this is me, take it or leave it,’ and then stopping there. As an introverted person I still fight the impostor sometimes, but now that I’ve identified him I have power over him and I can empower the true self, who God made me to be.”

Understanding what your mask is will not remove the temptation to wear it. Because I am such an outsider in the realm of my experience, even in this present moment, it is tempting to embrace that label as a part of my identity. As I begin my internship with Chi Alpha at UVA, I’m entering a fully formed, self-sustaining community, and a large one at that. I’m not sure what my place within this community is yet. I don’t yet know how God wants to use my gifts and talents to bless my fellow staff members and the students I’ll be ministering to. However, I know that if I embrace the identity of an outsider I will put up walls that would prevent me from caring and loving the people around me to the extent that God wants me to. So instead I reach out, I intentionally look for ways to get integrated into the community; all the while learning to be the person God created me to be at all times. It takes effort and I’m still learning but I’m enjoying the growth.

Now, again I feel clarification is needed. In my case, God provided a great deal of inner healing concerning the areas of my life that supported the mask long before I realized what mask I was wearing. That may or may not be the case for you. Perhaps God will reveal the mask you’ve been wearing and the healing will follow. Perhaps he’ll do something similar to what he did in my life and the healing will come first. Either way, he will do something because it is his desire to restore you and help you fully become the beautiful person he created you to be from the moment he conceived of you in his mind. However, don’t be mistaken: it will test you. John Eldredge writes, “In order to take a man into his wound, so that he can heal it and begin the release of the true self, God will thwart the false self. He will take away all that you’ve leaned upon to bring you life… God thwarts us to save us. We think it will destroy us, but the opposite is true—we must be saved from what really will destroy us.” At the beginning it will be messy and emotionally painful, but in the long run it will be so, so worth it.

I share my experience because I know it would be foolish to think I’m the only person who’s ever worn a mask to hide deeply rooted insecurities. Getting to where I am now wasn’t an easy process by any means and it was only by having many of my most precious goals subverted and deep desires go unfulfilled that I was able to turn to God and begin the process of seeing if the man behind the mask still existed. Fortunately, he did and God had been with him the entire time. Revelation 19:10 says that the spirit of prophecy is testimony, meaning that what God did for someone else becomes the foundation of what we believe he will do for us. Hopefully my story will fill you all with confident expectation of God’s coming work in your life to dismantle the lies of the enemy and reveal the glorious child behind the mask.

What’s on Your Tombstone?

What do you want your tombstone to say? It’s a question that we’ll all be asked or think about at some point in our lives, usually when death is the last thing on our minds. If you put some thought into it, it can become a much deeper and probing question than it is on the surface.

(Photo courtesy MNW-Photography)

“What kind of life do you want to live? What sort of person do you want to become? What will your legacy be?” Even as I write these questions a line from one of my favorite rap songs come to mind: “Selah, pause, calmly think about that.”

Yes, if only we would pause, step out of the busyness of life and take a long, hard look at our lives; not to focus on the bad, as we so often do when forced to introspection, but to look at all the positive change in our lives, to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned and the change that’s occurred–both within and around us. Finally, that we’d plot a course for the future. So often we change unconsciously, unknowing participants in the circumstances of our lives and it’s simply by the grace of God that we don’t fall into mistake

after

mistake

after

mistake.

What if we looked at God’s presence in our lives not as a fence to keep us from trouble or failure but as a ladder to take us to higher places, places we never dreamed we could go. Places that God created us to go.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been pondering the above questions more and more, no doubt spurred on by the change and reflection that comes when one ends a major season of life (in my case, graduating college). I don’t yet know what I’d want my gravestone to say (my apologizes to all who read this far just to discover the answer to this question), but I will share a quote that sums up the spirit of who I want to become.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Life isn’t meant to be managed, it’s meant to be lived: moment to moment, hour to hour, day by day. I’ve spent many years as a manager of life. From managing my relationships to my future, I mentally plotted out every potential future, but rarely if ever stepped into one. If I thought something wouldn’t go my way, I retreated from it. It is only within the past two years of my life that I’ve learned that for some things, you don’t count the cost, you don’t weight the options. You simply take a leap of faith and let the chips fall wherever God throws them. Because, you see, that’s the key secret of living by the spirit, so long as you are following the direction of God in the moment you don’t have to worry about the outcome. The outcome is God’s responsibly, obedience (and with it, action) is ours. Every time I read this quote it is a reminder that not accomplishing the goals in your life is not failure, failure is never attempting to achieve them in the first place.

You see, what ends up on your gravestone isn’t about what you do, but about who you become and you can only become who you were meant to be by turning your mind off and your heart on.

If won’t be easy and it won’t happen by accident. It will require intentionality, passion, and resiliency. You will open yourself up to pain on a deeply personal level, but you’ll also find a joy that cannot be surpassed. The world has enough critics, it needs more fighters. And you were created to be latter not the former.

So here’s my question: will you be a fighter or a critic? Will you live in the truth or the lie? The choice is yours and no one will make it for you. The world is watching.

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Go!!!!

*Need extra motivation to hope into the arena? Here are a few of my favorite quotes to read when I need to be reminded to stay in the arena.*

How often do you think we write our own ending before the story is even finished? How often do we give up on ourselves when our lives are just starting? Things get hard and we immediately back away and assume that means we’re going in the wrong direction, doing the wrong thing. If anything, when the waters get thick, that’s our sign to keep going. – Rachel Van Dyken

If I’ve learned one lesson from all that’s happened to me, it’s that there’s no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out. – Sophie Kinsella

I am not a product of circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. – Stephen Covey

You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until you can see this clearly, you must pretend and invent. – Paulo Coelho

What do you want: The pain of staying where you are, or the pain of growth? – Judith Hanson Lasater

No matter how great the talent or efforts, something’s just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant – Warren Buffet.

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. – William GT. Shedd

“Many people have died for their beliefs…The real courage is living and suffering for what you believe.” Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends” – J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of places if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

A Day in the Life

So what does the post-grad life look like on the average day? I’m glad you asked.  (Surprisingly, it doesn’t always look like that picture.)

• Attempting to adjust to a normal sleeping schedule and failing horribly (staying up too late and getting up too early is not a good combination).
• Yard work for mom (I’m becoming a master wheel barrow driver)
• Impromptu babysitting gigs with the little brothers (pro bono, of course)
• Competitive games of 20 questions with the fam when the power goes out (aka, yesterday night).
• Diving head long into my summer reading list (I just finished Spirit Wars by Kris Vallotton, and I’m in the midst of reading If You Want to Walk on Water You’ve Got to Get out of the Boat by John Ortberg, The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson, and The Essential Guide to Healing by Randy Clark and Bill Johnson).

I’ve also been diving head-long into support raising for my upcoming Chi Alpha internship at UVA. What’s that look like? Well, I’m looking to raise $1,875 a month for living expenses (housing, food, transportation, phone bill, food, etc.) and $1200 for internship related expenses (books for internship classes, retreats, outreaches on campus, etc.) I need to be fully supported by August 3^rd so I can join UVA’s Chi Alpha staff for preparing for the upcoming school year, but on a personal level I’m believing to be fully supported by the end of June. I’ve just started support raising full-time over the last couple weeks and God’s provision and the generosity from friends and family has been incredible.

I’ve already received a donation to cover the entire $1200 in internship related expenses (when I got the email my spirit man ran around the house for a couple hours), and I’ve raised 11% of my monthly budget with several others agreeing to partner with me in this awesome adventure.

By now all this good news has probably got you all excited and antsy to be a part. Fortunately, my operation has room for aggressive expansion (if you can name the quote that statement’s based off of, you’re my hero). If you wanna know more about the Chi Alpha internship and what I’ll be doing as a part of that or you’re already hooked and want to jump on the support bandwagon shoot me an email or give me a call! I’d love to connect with you and share about the vision God’s put on my heart for UVA this upcoming year.

Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from you soon!

Christopher

– chris.22.webb@gmail.com

-434-242-4196

Into the Wardrobe

Three days ago I graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, bringing my academic life to a close. It’s bittersweet to leave behind the friends and memories I’ve formed over the past two years; however, I’m extremely excited about what the future holds.

Speaking of the future, back in March, I made the decision to spend the next year of my life as an intern for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries at the University of Virginia (Wahoowa!), my parents and older sister’s alma mater. Chi Alpha is a nationally recognized campus ministry on over three hundred campuses across the United States. Being part of Chi Alpha at VCU was a tremendous experience and I’m looking forward to helping students at UVA have an equally memorable experience as they encounter God in a deeper way than they have up to this point.

Now, in order to do what they do, Chi Alpha workers across the country are responsible for raising their own support so they can reach students at the university. This involves reaching out to friends and family to assemble a team of prayer and financial partners who share the same vision of seeing college students reached with the Gospel (kind of like Nike Fury recruiting the Avengers). As an intern with Chi Alpha, I have this same privilege; although when I found out I would have to support raise in order to do the internship, I didn’t see it as much of a privilege. In fact, I almost didn’t do it at all! The idea of having to do work (support raise) so that I could have money to do work (reach students) was not a terribly attractive prospect. After four years of college I was looking forward to getting a regular, safe job that would provide a consistent pay cut. Eventually I came to a crossroads where I had to decide what was more important: stepping out in faith to fulfill what God had called me to do or reject it and stay in my comfortable bubble of familiarity.

Which leads me to the title of this post. In C.S. Lewis’ much beloved book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a wardrobe functions as a portal of choice between the life the Pevensie children had always known and the life they were meant to live. We all, at some point or another, will be faced with this same choice: to step into the wardrobe, leave the familiar behind, and see what God has for us on the other side, or to retreat back into the comfortable, familiar life we’ve created for ourselves. Now, this is not a one time choice but a choice we’ll spend our lives making. However, every time we saw no, it makes it a little bit more difficult to step out in faith in response to God’s call. It’s scary for sure, but would it be a risk worth taking if it made us comfortable?

I decided to step into the wardrobe and even in these early days, I’ve seen God’s goodness and provision made real in ways I wouldn’t have experienced if I hadn’t embraced the risk of the wardrobe. I’ve already raised 10% of my monthly budget and I’m amazed by the generosity of the people who’ve volunteered to partner with me in this mission.

I named this Blog Deeper Waters because last November I received a prophetic word that God was leading me into deeper waters, and in these deeper waters He would reveal himself in ways I had never experienced before. This blog is the record of my journey into the deeper waters. For these summer months, this blog will tell the story of my continual exploration of God’s faithfulness as I raise support for the internship. I’ll also post my thoughts on the deeper issues of faith and life. Come August, this blog will record all the amazing things God does at UVA throughout the upcoming school year. And after that we’ll find additional deeper waters to explore.

Hopefully this post has intrigued, excited, and maybe even challenged you. If so, I invite you stay connected with me as I follow God on the path he’s laid before me. It’s going to be an adventure of the most epic proportions. And who knows, perhaps as you travel on this journey with me, you’ll be stirred to step into your own wardrobe and see what great things God’s prepared for you.