Embracing Truth: The Journey from Pretending to Healing
- By candidasullivan
- January 20, 2025
- No Comments
It’s so easy to pretend everything is okay, partly because we desperately want to be okay. We think if we fake it long enough, we will eventually make it true. I understand this level of pretending and wishing.
I did it for years. Not intentionally. Unknowingly, I caused myself more pain every time I shoved my emotions inward and plastered an outward smile. After years of ignoring my pain, it halted me. As I lay in bed, barely able to walk because the years of suppressed emotions weighed me down, I understood the actual weight of pretending to be okay.
When I tried to walk, my legs trembled underneath the weight of trying to carry all the unwanted emotions. I created a character in my head and pretended to be her. That’s what faking it until you make it means.
Every day, my body ached with a pain I had never felt before. My shoulders became traumatized. I thought it was from overusing my shoulders, but now I believe it was from trying to carry all those unwanted and unprocessed feelings and pretending to be okay when I wasn’t.
When God pushed me out of my comfort zone by publishing my books and giving me speaking opportunities, I should have journaled every day and asked God to help me process everything and be able to grow through it all. Instead, I tried to carry every hardship and fear alone.
If I had taken it all to God and been honest with Him, He would have helped me get through it at the moment and process it all healthily. Pretending with God only hurts us more.
To not feel, I stayed so busy. The busyness that causes the soul to be weary and overwhelmed. My mind was a constant jumble of thoughts. Throughout the day, I tried to distract myself, but all of the unwanted thoughts and feelings overwhelmed me at night. I spent lots of nights unable to sleep and paralyzed by fear. Every worst-case scenario imaginable plagued my mind.
The fear swirled around me in the darkness, and I felt like it would consume me. Sometimes, I would wake up drenched in sweat, struggling to breathe. In the panic of it all, I would feel like I was going to die.
As I processed this many years later, I realized it was a projection of what was happening inside me. I was destroying myself by trying to hold it all in and hold it all together. The battle was inside of me. It wasn’t outside events that I feared. It was me. I feared what was happening inside of me.
My soul struggled against my flesh. My flesh wanted to stay in my comfort zone, and my soul desired to follow the Lord. It was a spiritual warfare.
When I took medication to stop the panic attacks, I prolonged my suffering. It felt like it helped at the time, but it didn’t. The medicine helped me to endure the pain, but it also kept me stuck in a pain cycle.
Confronting the truth with God helped me. Exposed and vulnerable, sitting before Him helped me understand what was happening to me and why. God helped me to break the chains the enemy had bound around me.
God helped me discover my true self and learn to love and care for her. It was one of the most beautiful and freeing experiences of my life. The love and acceptance I so desperately wanted and craved were already inside of me. The day I got saved, God made me enough. God’s love dwells in me. It’s not fake or conditional. God’s love will heal us and give us peace. In Him, I have everything I need.
The day we got saved, we received the mind of Christ. It’s in us, but we must learn how to use it. God can teach us how to think, and our thoughts will change how we feel.
I’ve stopped pretending and started praying.
Now, I don’t just read my Bible; I pray through it, seeking the understanding and peace that only God can give me. I have conversations with God every day and ask Him questions. Sometimes, it’s hard to hear His answers, and sometimes, I still want to run away from the truth. But the old saying is very true: The truth will set you free.
God’s truth will expose the lies and reveal the enemy and his tricks. The truth will bring the flesh under subjection and prosper our soul.

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