ONLY FROM THE HIGHLIGHT REEL

"It's not authentic to only post 

from your Highlight Reel."

Kristen Howerton - Killer Tribes Conference 2013

If only life could be as perfect as a lot of us are making it seem in our social media feeds.  Seriously.

Because (let's be honest, here) a lot of us are posting from the Highlight Reel.  The good stuff.

Oh, I'll let you see the lunch note I packed for my son, the Pinterest-inspired flax seed blueberry muffins I made for my kiddos, the flowers my husband brought me, and the special craft I'm making with my daughter.  I'll post the pic from that passage in my Bible.  These, I'll gladly show you.

But what you won't see is a shot of the Little Caesars drive-thru where I'll pick up a $5 hot-and-ready pizza for the second time this week because I didn't exactly get a homemade meal ready.  Again.  And you can forget ever catching a glimpse of my cluttered car or my make-up free face because, well, ain't nobody want to see all of this without some mascara!  But that's the beauty of the Instagram feed: I can show you what I want, and nothing that I don't feel like having you see.

And this putting forth a certain persona is nothing new.  "Better to be a nobody and yet have a servant than pretend to be somebody and have no food" (Proverbs 12:9).  Maybe if Instagram existed back in Biblical days, people would have envied each other's pictures of Manna-Crusted Quail, or the cute new pair of sandals Sarai was wearing.  Maybe the idea of "pretending to be somebody" has endured the ages, and lives on in our posts and pictures.  

I'm not pretending to have a beautiful family whom I adore.  That's real.  But I can control certain elements of how that comes across, for sure.  I can edit and censor until everything looks prettier than the messiness and craziness of our everyday life.  

I've been chewing on this a lot the past few days.  I'm sure I'll keep sharing highlights from our life--but I want to be more mindful of WHY I am posting what I post.  If it's to try to create an illusion of a perfect house filled with homemade delicacies, time perfectly spent, and a flawlessly-fed family, then I need to check my own heart in that. Because that's not always our reality.

People aren't posting the shot of the carton of ice cream they finished off or the couch-fest that took the place of the workout that should've happened.    

Nobody posts pictures of their disappointed children who wish mom or dad would get the heck off their phones.   

We post the pleasant and leave the rest on the cutting room floor.  

But it's true.  It really isn't authentic to only post from our Highlight Reels.   

* Have you struggled with the tendency to tell a certain story through your posts/pictures that is prettier than the real thing? 

Father, give us grace today for the many ways in which we'll come up short.  When we try to appear to have it all together, that only keeps us from really getting the fact that we are in desperate need of You...daily.  Your power is made perfect in our weakness, and we can have hope in our failings because You do not fail.