Offering all of our authentic selves

By Mia Pohlman

One of my professors recently made this comment about the character of Edmund from Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park": "Because Edmund likes Miss Crawford, he is willing to do anything to get close to her, even if that means being inconsistent with himself."

The phrase "being inconsistent with himself" really struck me -- how and when am I willing to be inconsistent with myself and who God has made me to be in order to get what I want, whether that is approval, acceptance or something else?

How does this inconsistency contribute to how the fear of being too much relates to the fear of not being enough?

I've been thinking about the fear of being too much lately. I've noticed sometimes in class, my classmates and I will apologize when we talk a lot about something we're passionate about or show an unrestrained excitement beyond what normal culture would deem acceptable emotional investment in a topic.

We preface our comments with a "sorry," or, mid-sentence, realize our enthusiasm and that it might be too much for some people and mumble an apology.

Our self-conscious apology is not so much asking for forgiveness, I've realized, as it is asking for permission to be alive, for assurance that our classmates will receive and support whatever it is that is important to us that we are offering to them through our passion.

It is a beautiful thing to be excited about something good, and I don't know why we apologize except to protect ourselves from others' judgment that our authentic self might be too much for them to handle, that if we let them see too much of our true self, they might reject it.

True, we shouldn't cast our pearls before swine. But playing it cool and pretending not to care is an awfully boring way to go through life. I can't help thinking the only way the world is going to change for the better is if we offer all of our authentic selves in the service of it.

I am reminded of Marianne Williamson: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you ... We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us."

I think the fear of not being enough has its roots in a distrust of God's craftsmanship in us, and that the fear of being too much has its roots in a distrust of God being all around, within and through us, the one whose we are, who has us no matter what.

We can follow him alone, trusting that all we are is enough, and our God will never ask us to be less than who he knows we are as a person uniquely made in his image.

When we live this true identity, we are secure in him.