Explaining Myself

I’ve been thinking about when and how I feel like I need to explain myself. I was talking with a friend about feeling unconfident in my ability to explain the really big changes in my life when I gave my life to Jesus. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

But that got me thinking more about how much I explain myself, and when, and to whom, just in all of life in general.

I do it too much. I’m not sure why I do that, but I definitely do. Example: instead of just saying, “I can’t make it at 2:00 today,” I launch into a long explanation of everything else I have going on that prevents me from being [somewhere else instead] at 2:00. I don’t think most people care. And if they do care, I’m not sure they should.

I think I do this because I always feel like I’m being judged, i.e., do I have a good enough reason for not being able to make it at 2:00? Or I feel like nobody will believe me if I just say it. I don’t think most people actually are judging or disbelieving me that way. I think most people just believe me when I say I can’t make it at 2:00 and move on.

Maybe a little more deeply, I think I feel, deep down, like I’m not qualified (or authorized?) to be the creator of facts… like the only facts I can state as facts are those for which I have airtight external proof, evidence, a mountain of reasons that nobody could ever possibly question.

I do have a hunch about why I feel that way. But I’m not going to go into that here. (See? I just practiced not explaining myself….)

The point is, I think I need to practice saying things like, “I can’t make it at 2:00 today.” Period. Full stop. No explanation.

So how does that relate to telling people that I’ve become a Christian?

Well….. I’ve been hesitant about mentioning that to a lot of people because I don’t feel like I know enough to explain all of Christianity yet, or why I was drawn to it and why it was the right thing for me to do.

I finally had a major insight, that I don’t owe anybody an explanation for why I became a Christian. Nobody. There is literally nobody on this Earth to whom I owe an explanation of that. So the fact that I feel like too much of a “newbie” Christian to be able to offer an airtight explanation to [anybody whomsoever] for why I did that, or why that is the right thing for me to do … doesn’t matter. Because I don’t need to explain it. To anybody. I can just say it as a fact.

And THAT — I absolutely can do.