no time for timid.

Last week, a girl started her testimony by telling me that it was "just a silly, mushy story."

I totally called her on it. Nicely.

"I'm not saying this is you, but I really struggle with how I talk about God's work in my life. I want to say things like, 'My story isn't that great,' or 'It wasn't really a big deal,' and then I realize that what God did in my life is so much bigger than those words, you know?"

Yeah. I did. I know. I'm that girl.

I think she understood. I think it was perceived well. And besides, this post isn't really about her response to my self-righteousness. It's about my own hypocrisy.

For Easter, I talked about my story with God for a video testimony that was played during services at my church. It was an interesting experience, about which I have a bunch of thoughts, but mainly, right now, I've got one that keeps looping back around: I never told my parents. Not really, anyway.

I may have mentioned it quickly, and in passing--"Oh yeah, I talked a little about God for a video for Easter. Is it still pretty cold there?" But I didn't tell them tell them--"I'm filming a video at church, talking about how God reached into my life last year, and convinced me of His truth, and about how my whole life has changed because I chose to accept what He did for me in dying on the cross, and now I seek a life guided by His spirit. So, um, yeah."

The discrepancy between those versions is about to bite back. The church is playing the video during James River Women's Designed For Life conference next month. The one to which I invited my Mom. She said yes.

I realized the reality suddenly, and violently, during breakfast with a friend this weekend. I knew the video was on the docket through a weird sort of "word from the Lord" kind of deal, but that whole "my Mom seeing it" thing hadn't yet hit.

I love my mother, and she knows I love God, and I know she loves God, but I'm very emotionally open in that video. We don't talk like that in my house. We don't get into the nuts and bolts of faith. We don't share about our loneliness, or pain, or whatever it is that brought us to Christ. And the idea of her sitting next to me, watching me talk about how the church loved me to Christ is...more terrifying than exciting.

But then...who am I, and who is Christ, if I can't let those parts of me be known? Who am I to call a girl on her saying her testimony is "just a silly" story? Who is Christ to me that I'm running scared about my mother knowing the real me, the me that really loves God?

It's time. If God is working in my life, and I believe He is, it's time. If I love Him, and I do, it's time. If I feel as passionately as I do about other people knowing His love, it's time.

So...it's time.