“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.’” (Excerpt from John Eldredge, Wild at Heart)
I had lived behind a mask watching people labor through life’s difficult circumstances with an empty compassion; never offering much grace. With a distorted myopic view of my present reality, I chose to see people going through the motions of life expecting sympathy without any hope of a new tomorrow. I had convinced myself that they followed some scripted destiny with hopeless desperation. My perspective was so distorted.
