Welcome to the Realness

This article appeared in SoJoMail today and was written by Titilayo Tinubu, where it originally appeared on her blog, www.titilayotalks.blogspot.com.


Naked and Unashamed

My first "F" ever was on a paper that I wrote for my Advanced Composition class freshman year at Spelman College. I say "ever," and I truly believe that. I don't recall ever getting low grades on many assignments and especially not English. Needless to say, that experience broke me down and caused me to rethink some things. To understand why, you'll have to know the reason why Dr. Gebre-Hewitt gave me that grade (or, more responsibly said, the reason why I earned that "F"). It was not because of grammar mistakes, broken syntax, or poor transitions. It wasn't even because I turned it in late (which I often did). According to my professor, I earned that "F" because I was not writing the truth, and the first law of every writer should be to speak his or her truth. Sure, the paper was pretty, it was perfect, it was exactly according to the instructions that she had given in the previous class, but it wasn't the TRUTH. Somehow she knew that I was writing for her and for the grade and not as an expression of my unique voice. And for that, she broke me down.

How many of us live our lives like that? How many of us work arduously to perfect the external all the while neglecting the truth of who we are? How many of us spend the bulk of our lives in pretense, only to end up being "pretty, perfect, and just what others ask for" but not the TRUTH?

The recurring theme in my life as of lately has been intimacy, genuineness, honesty and truth. Lately I've found myself asking questions like: Who in my life can I be true with? Who in my life offers opportunities for me to be true with them, and why don't I take them? Why won't I just be true with everyone? And here's the biggie: What is it that I am afraid of?

At the heart of this and every insecurity is an underlying fear. And I believe that we do ourselves a disservice when we don't examine and judge our souls to make sure that those fears don't dominate our lives and sabotage any real attempts to genuine community and relationship. I know that there are things about me that are downright ugly and imperfect, and it makes me woozy on the inside when I even think of having to one day open up and share. But in a bright corner of that same deep place, I know that it is good.

Do you have people in your life who push you? People in your life who stretch you? People in your life who ask you the hard questions and stare blankly and patiently into your eyes (or wait quietly on the other end of the phone) until you present an honest and genuine answer?

Friends, God is growing something in me. God is shaping me and molding me for something beautiful that will require the bare, naked, uncensored and untamed Titilayo in all her glory. And though that frightens me to the very core of my being, it's something beautiful.

What if, just WHAT IF, we were designed to experience a deeper and more intimate fellowship with one another than fear of rejection and insecurity have allowed us to experience? What if?

Just what if uncomfortable conversations, confrontations that birth transformations and agreeable disagreements were supposed to be the mark of our relationships instead of political correctness, avoidance, and cowardly shrinking back? What if we learned to appreciate the rawness of one another and chose to forsake our attempts to cover up those deep, hard and uncharted places where relational depth lies?

I can't speak for you and your relationships. I can only speak for mine. And I will say that I long for a deeper experience with those I call "friend" since God apparently considered it good that we cross paths. I know, have been a part of, and have observed perfected phoniness long enough, and I believe that it is time to move past the niceness and embrace the ugly. I think it's time to truly test our love for the often unlovable people that each of us can be, and press out of our comfort zones that would have us lazily maintain relationships that lack depth and substance.

I have been guilty of this, but I have also seen a glimpse of the enrichment and growth that comes from being and expressing truth. And in doing this, in pressing to those deep places with one another, in simply going there, we experience a connectedness, mutual responsibility and ownership that affirms our humanness like never before.

I became more human today. This invisible light bulb went off that illuminated something that has always been, yet I never noticed. It shined light on the fact that I am inextricably tied to the hurt, pain, joy, sadness, glee, blessing, suffering of others, and people, more than anything else should be handled with care.

Now, you may not want to be my (real or virtual) friend after this. But if you happen to be one of the crazy people who still do, (drumroll please...) welcome to the realness.

Expect to hear the tough questions from me. Expect me to pry to those inner places and push beyond the surface, politically correct, and often trite answers. Expect me to go there with you, and I plead you, I beg of you to go there with me.I promise: we will all be better for it. And in doing so we'll experience a deeper level of humanness that counters the lie that we're in this alone, and affirms the reality that we were made to be in this together.

So step into this scary, frightening, freeing, uncertain, pure, honest place with me. Get naked with me, will you?