“Christ comes to restore and release you, your soul, the true you.” – Wild at Heart

My wife texted me this quote yesterday. It wasn’t the first time in the past week that I had been approached with thoughts about restoration, release, of being who I really am. What a great quote, though. We are free in Christ to be the actual creature He created. To be our TRUE self. The problem is we usually don’t take advantage.

I’ve spent a great deal of time professionally counseling companies on how to create a brand for themselves or a product or service. How to message and portray the “essence” of what they are selling. How they want others to think and feel about it. It’s all about image. Perception is reality. We’re all consumers, so this idea of a “brand” is not a foreign concept. As you walk down the aisles of any store, you see the packages lined up with their own distinct messages and colors and designs and shapes. They each have their own presence and personality. They all are projecting an image that they hope will make you buy them.

I do that in my everyday life. And I bet I’m not alone. I create a brand to project to the world around me. It’s partly who I am, but in many ways it’s far different. There’s an entire persona that I have to work hard to keep in tact that speaks to success in my career, my personality, my moral compass, my family life, my talents. An image that requires daily maintenance, and at the same time smothers the real me. The true me. That doesn’t afford for me to be human and to be okay with my flaws and confident in my own skin. That doesn’t allow me to show the world how I’m broken and how God is working in me. The true me.

There are two major problems with creating a brand to represent my being. First, a brand is an attempt to express something you are striving to be. It takes liberties with reality, glosses over flaws. You can easily lose yourself, who you truly are, in trying to keep up with the brand that you are putting out on the shelf.

The second problem is that I don’t fully control my brand. One of the basic tenets of brand management is that a brand is ultimately shaped and defined by the people you share it with. In the end, your brand is not what YOU say it is. It’s what others perceive you to be. So, now, in addition to altering my true being to project a different image, I’m also being subjected to labels and expectations by the outside world. And quickly, I can become really confused and insecure about who I really am.

I guess there’s actually a third problem with a brand. It doesn’t take long for your consumers to figure out that you don’t have it all together anyway. I mean, how many times have you bought a product based on the “brand promise” only to be disappointed in its performance? Happens all the time with products, and with people. Just because you smile big and put on your “Sunday best” doesn’t mean everyone is buying it. There’s no way to live up to the image, to deliver on the promise, leaving me deflated and defeated.

I want to be the true me. I want to replace my brand with my being. I want to live a transparent life and to have God work through it. While it would be a difficult, scary and taxing thing to do, I can just imagine how liberating it would feel and how powerful it would be in fulfilling God’s plan for me.

So my prayer is that I’ll allow Christ to restore and release me, my soul, the true me.