Hello old friends, new followers, and fellow bloggers-
It’s Halloween aka costume day! As a believer, I do not celebrate Halloween. However, my timeline is full of cute pictures of little munchkins in costume. As I was sitting in meditation, I started thinking about the concepts of masks and monsters. Halloween is all about dressing up, eating candy and all things spooky. This causes children to dress up as monsters, zombies and to cover their beautiful faces with masks as they play pretend. However, what if we were pretending every day besides today?
Think about it. When was the last time you felt the freedom to be who you really are? I mean the “real” you. I think that we wear masks all the time. When someone asks us how we are, we lie and say we are good. When we ask someone how they are, we hope they will lie because we don’t have the time or capacity to handle their truth. We are a society that encourages pretend. Heck, we have a whole holiday dedicated to this very concept. Being oneself is less favorable, but becoming like the ones we admire is encouraged. Everyone wants to be the next influencer. Everyone wants to have the most traffic on IG. Everyone wants to appear to be living their best life. These ideals create monsters, emotionally unstable members of society that cannot communicate truthfully what they desire. It’s hard, to tell the truth when you’ve committed to your fantasy. It’s easier to ignore red flags when you’re dedicated to the lie. Our love for masks has created monsters.
“Well Simone, that’s a little harsh.” Yes, it is. Just because something is harsh does not make it less true. The more I live, the more I see the epidemic of inauthenticity. It is a disease to hide oneself to please those who did not create you. Dishonesty is like cancer, it destroys originality. We were created in the image of God, each beautiful and unique. We were given “difference” as a superpower, a weapon against a world system built on conformity. Why are we conditioning ourselves to forfeit our superpower? Our weapon? To pretend to be something we were never designed to be. For the longest, I believed the lie that being myself was not enough, but the more I step into who I am the freer I become. Authenticity and radical honesty bring a level of freedom that’s dangerous to our world. So, loves you must stay dangerous!
Xoxo,
Simone
Authentic Love: God, Relationships, and Life 
