Insta Authenticity (On Integrity & Social Media)

It’s no secret social media can be somewhat misleading when it comes to an accurate portrayal of our lives. Facebook and Instagram have been labeled “highlight reels,” but that’s not a bad thing. I prefer highlights over every single detail of people’s lives.

Yet because social media are geared toward showcasing highlights, they can easily become comparison traps (everyone else is always having more fun than I am) or self esteem damagers (either promoting sky high egos or tearing down healthy self confidence). We’re all about the number of likes, and we're all chasing that quick “double tap” to get more red hearts on Insta.

Since I’ve been overseas, I’ve started utilizing social media more in an effort to stay connected with friend and family back in the States. I’ve found I have to double check myself before posting in order to avoid the comparison and self esteem traps of social media. Here are some of the questions I ask myself before posting to Instagram.

To filter or not to filter? That is the question...

1. Is this post accurately portraying my day/life?

Have I had a terrible week and avoided posting, but now that I have ice cream I want to show the world how happy I am? There’s nothing wrong with being pumped about an exciting event (ice cream definitely makes the list), but is all I’m posting those exciting moments? If so, maybe I’m not giving an accurate portrayal of my life to those viewing my posts. I’m not saying I want to read sob stories or posts about how miserable you are. Really, I don’t. I’m saying if I only leave my house once a week but post pictures with dozens of friends each time, people will think I’m a social butterfly, which would definitely be misleading (and that’s a nice way of putting it). On and off social media, I’m a proponent of authenticity, meaning an accurate portrayal of life. There has to be a balance somewhere.


2. Do the filters make this scene seem more beautiful than it really is?

I’ll ‘fess up. I used to add filters left and right because hey, they really do make my pictures look better! Who doesn’t need a little Amaro or Perpetua in their life? However, recently I’ve stopped to wonder: am I adding filters because I’m afraid the landscape isn’t as pretty as everyone else’s #nature shots? If the filter brings out the true beauty in the scene or helps with the lighting—if it helps give the viewer a look that’s closer to reality—I’m all for filters and edits. But if the purpose is to impress, maybe it’s better to go filterless.

3. Is this picture offensive or harmful to anyone?

Especially overseas, we have a tendency to post pictures of the unusual, and those pictures may or may not include locals and their way of life. Those people may never see my post, but if I’d be embarrassed to show them or if the post (including the hashtags) is any way mocking their way of life, it’s time to close out my social media apps. Is our #winning making someone else feel like they’re #losing? In any community, I believe we should ensure our comments and posts are respectful and loving toward all those around us.

4. What’s my motive?

If my motive is to garner “likes” or, as I mentioned above, to impress, I probably shouldn’t post it. Mostly because it’s harmful to myself. It’s a red flag I’m feeling “not enough” and am looking for my value and worth in others’ opinions. It’s a setup for failure. In these cases, posts can very well be harmless to everyone except ourselves. We’re worth protecting, too; our motive is worth checking.

These are just a few of the guidelines I use when posting to Instagram. Often, I’m about to post a picture when I perform a quick mental review with these questions, and I imagine Fat Amy’s voice (from Pitch Perfect) commenting, “Mmmm…better not." And the post is discarded, edits and hashtags and all. Upholding my values must take a higher priority than the little red hearts. It’s simply the only way Instagram will ever be #worthit to me.

How do you decide what to post on Instagram and other social media mediums?

Are there any guidelines you go by, formal or informal?

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment or send an email over to my inbox!

Scarcity and the Spiritual

Scarcity is a topic just making its way into the public conversation arena. It can be summed up as the belief there’s “not enough:" not enough time, not enough happiness to go around for everyone, not enough money, and the list continues. It can manifest as “I am not enough”—not pretty enough, good enough, nice enough, productive enough—a lie I faced head-on after an experience in a Cambodian hospital left me painfully aware of my inadequacies.

The scarcity mindset is rampant and often leaks unnoticed into all realms of our lives, including the spiritual. I’m sure scarcity manifests itself in different ways for different people, but here are three ways I’ve noticed the “not enough” mantra invading my spiritual life.

1) I’m afraid there’s not enough grace and mercy to cover my sins.

As someone who grew up in church, the gravity of sin was hammered into me from a young age. Add perfectionism to church legalism, and it’s easy to understand why it’s such a struggle to believe Jesus’ mercy is enough to cover me every time I sin. Time after time after time, I stumble and fall, and sometimes it just seems plain impossible that Christ has any mercy left. Questions such as “How can God forgive me even though I’ve fallen into this sin so many times?” and “How can God still love me after all I’ve done?” are birthed. Yet the Word clearly says His love endures forever, and His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22). Viewing this lie as a scarcity issue has helped me understand where these fear-based doubts come from and freed me to rejoice in the abundance of the Lord’s mercy.

2) I start believing there’s not enough encouragement for all the times I feel down.

Every time I serve overseas, my mom has this wonderful tradition of collecting notes from my friends and family and sending them with me for days when I need a little extra encouragement. It’s a great resource—except for several years I convinced myself the number of moments of discouragement I'd have would exceed the number of notes to read. I stockpiled the letters for times when I “really needed” them. I tried to muscle through the hard days because I was so afraid a harder time would come and no encouragement would be left. At the end of several summer trips, I had a dozen unread notes to read on the plane home. They were still fun to open, but I found I’d robbed myself of the encouragement God had provided for the hard times.

These days I push past my fears and reach out to others when I'm having a rough day, either by sending a text or opening a note (though I try to be careful I’m seeking hope first from the Lord and not from other people’s words). It’s been a source of encouragement and strength, and on days I have no letters and no signal, the Lord continues to provide. The interactions I find most encouraging are, after all, the ones pointing me back to find strength in the Lord Himself.

3) I’m afraid God’s gifts are limited.

Even when I pray, I fall prey to the scarcity mindset. I’m hesitant to ask the Lord for hope, encouragement, or a boost in mood. I act as though there’s a quota for the gifts He gives each of His children, and we must be wise about when and why we ask for them. However, when I look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels, His generosity cannot be measured, and Paul refers to the riches of Christ as unfathomable (Ephesians 3:18). I must ask myself, “Am I robbing myself of asking for and enjoying His gifts because of a scarcity mindset?”


The root of it all, I suppose, is a belief that God is not enough. It’s a lie that creeps into my heart and makes subtle but significant changes in the way I view God and myself. When I start believing God is not enough, I search for “enough” in other places: in myself, in others’ approval, in “success,” or in knowledge. Yet Jesus is enough is a fundamental part of the Gospel. There is no scarcity in His Kingdom. I have to remind myself of this every day. He’s enough to hold my fears, my failures, my future, my down days. He's enough for my scarcity mindset and all it entails!

Again and Again

I read a friend’s Facebook post today, and it really encouraged me. It was funny and lighthearted and honest and talked about how she was waiting for the future superhero version of herself to arrive. I wish I could share the actual post with you, but when I tried to go back to it I couldn't find it for the life of me!

Anyway, it was encouraging because perfectionism and idealistic expectations have been a long-time struggle for me.

Usually what most discourages me is just how long I’ve been fighting the same battle. I get disappointed when I make progress and then fall back down again. And again. And again. I feel frustrated there’s no formula or shortcut. It’s hard to keep finding grace for myself.

Yet it’s moments like these—a quick look at a friend’s post on Facebook—that remind me I’m not alone and help me get up again. In the middle of a newsfeed of picturesque moments and ads targeting my desire for “better, more, and easier,” I find hidden treasures in people sharing the everyday parts of their lives and their hearts.

Much of life is like this. In person or virtually, we are bombarded by ads and messages reinforcing negative beliefs we have about ourselves and others. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Yet in the midst of it all, we also encounter the honesty of friends, the kindness of strangers, the joy of walking alongside people who are just as messy and messed up as we are—whatever it is we need to give us the courage and strength to rise after a faceplant. We all need this encouragement sometimes. We’re all waiting for the superhero version of ourselves to come—not one of us has found her yet!

When we practice authenticity and let our walls down, we not only experience freedom in our falling and rising, but we also find the strength to get back up. It's found in and fueled by compassion and empathy and community. We all need it. Today, tomorrow, the next day, the one after that and the one after that. We fall down and we get up. Sometimes our getting up is what gives someone else the courage to rise, and sometimes watching someone else get up for the millionth time is what gives us the extra nudge we need to try to stand on our wobbly legs again.

Again, and again, and again, and again.

I’ve written about this theme before, and here I write about it once more—because I needed that extra nudge again today, and maybe you do, too.

Here’s to getting up, to falling, and to getting up again. (And again. And again.)

Are there areas in life in which you feel like you're constantly falling and having to get back up?

What motivates you to get back up when you've fallen?

How can we be more intentional about helping each other back up?

Come and See

I have an ant problem in my room. I noticed them weeks ago, crawling around my room and sometimes on my mattress, but they never bit so I dismissed them after flinging them mercilessly off my bed. However, when I returned from a short expedition to Vietnam, I discovered the ants had begun making an ant pile near the base of one of the legs of my bed. Which meant…there were many, many ants on my bed. I cleaned out the ant pile, washed my sheets, and found the source of the ants. They were coming through holes in the poorly-sealed grout between the tiles on my wall. 

If I had wooden walls, they would literally be coming out of the woodwork. As it is, they were actually coming out of the tilework. And they had started to bite! It was war.

After trying several different battle tactics (including spraying them with Lysol and insect repellant, attempting to seal the grout with glue (and failing), and googling how to make homemade grout so I could more effectively fill the holes), they still wouldn’t stop crawling around. I managed to keep them off my bed by spraying the base of my bed with lemon-eucalyptus insect repellant, but they continued coming out of the tilework day and night. They were driving me crazy. I won’t elaborate on the paranoia I developed except to comment that I one night I had a dream a giant ant attacked me. Finally, though, it dawned on me that I had tape. I could tape over the ants’ entry points and keep them from congregating around my bed. (No matter that they can come in through the half-centimeter gap under my door. My door is far away enough from my bed.) Who needs to make homemade grout when they have tape?

Thus far, it’s working! Granted, at the time I’m writing this it’s only been about thirty minutes since I taped over the grout in my tile (with black electrical tape because that’s all I have), but I have high hopes for this plan. I watched one ant coming back to the holes in the grout, looking for the way back home, passing the tape confusedly, and then scurrying around in a panic-like state before heading back to wherever he came from. You know how ants crawl in a line? How they travel to a place and return using the exact same route? Well another ant was coming up that same route but hadn’t yet discovered the way home had been sealed, and I always imagine the ants talk to each other when they bump into one another going opposite ways. They bumped into each other, and the panicking ant waved his little antenna around like crazy, and the other ant paused for a millisecond before continuing hesitantly on his route. This is how I imagine their conversation went:

“Dude!! Dude!! I can’t find the hole to go home! It’s gone! Something happened! Something terrible is going on! You can’t go back that way! You can’t!!!”

“Really?!”

“Yes!!! What are we going to do?! You can’t go that way! Help me find a new way!”

“Oh. Thank you for the information. I’ll go see for myself.”

And then the ants continued on their way. What I like about ants (and I like very few things about ants, and I only like this trait sometimes) is that even if they bump into another ant that has updated news, they never listen. Over the past several days I’ve had plenty of ant observation time, and it’s true: I don’t know what kind of communication ants have, but they never take another ant’s word for it. They must see for themselves.

It reminds me of a woman in the Bible who told her friends about Jesus, and they went to see for themselves. It happened in a town near Jacob’s well in Samaria.

In the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman’s friends heard the woman’s testimony and came to see Jesus for themselves. Eventually they told the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know this is indeed the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).

Sometimes, it’s a good thing to be like those stubborn little ants. When we hear something so strange and radical it’s nearly unbelievable, we must go and find out for ourselves.

“Come and you will see.” That’s what Jesus told two men who asked where he was staying, and they did. They followed him and saw for themselves. And they ended up being two of the twelve disciples (John 1:39).

The Psalmist wrote: “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). It’s an invitation.

Come and see for yourself. I can tell you all the stories in the world about the Lord and what He is doing in the nations, about missions and the international church and how life-changing living with faithful Christians of a different culture can be. I can tell you how rewarding it is, how difficult it is, how it helps me see Jesus more clearly, but sometimes that doesn’t do it justice.

You must come and see for yourself.

So here is the invitation, friend! Come and see. Come to the nations and see what God is doing. Come to a cross-cultural setting and experience the joy and the wonder of learning about God from a completely new perspective. Come begin friendships with those who are not like you and see the beauty of diversity.

Come to Cambodia, or come to Mexico, or come to China town in your city, or come to an international students’ gathering. Come to a church service in a different language, or come to an apartment complex housing refugees. Come to a lifestyle built around Jesus. The Lord called us to make disciples of all nations, and the adventure and joy of following His call—that’s something you can only truly experience for yourself.

Don't take my word for it! Come and see for yourself.

(If you want, you can come see the tape on the tiles in my room for yourself!)