The pressure to perform is unreal sometimes. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article on marriage and had no idea so many people would like it. I was shocked. To me, it was just another article. But then all of a sudden after all of the views, I felt an all-new, higher expectation for my writing.

Have you ever felt this way? Like, you do something that everyone likes and get several pats on the back and good job's, and now that's the new you. You have entered the next level, and everyone expects you to be just as good, just as enlightening, just as profound, and just as spectacular as the last round.

And this is where I find myself right now. I find myself somewhere in the tension of the pressure to perform, and the reality of writing. It isn't an unfamiliar feeling. I've felt this in social situations before too. I start cracking a couple jokes, and then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh no, people think I'm funny now." In sports, I'd make some good plays and now I'm the designated MVP and I have some expectation riding on me into the next game.

It's a pretty common theme today. Performance, face, reputation, and success make up a lot of how we view people and ourselves. What have I done? What I have accomplished? What do people think of me? It takes a lot of maintenance to upkeep our perfectly fashioned faces.

I know that every article I write isn't going to have this dumbfounding effect on everyone. I can't always sucker-punch a line so good that people feel compelled to reread it. I also can't mold my writing to affirm and please everyone. But what I can do, and should do, is write with authenticity, caution, and careful thought to craft and propose ideas and truths. I should practice creating. I should attempt the articulation to my very best. Not for the affirmation of others, but for the very benefit of others. So that the words can be enjoyed, used, shared, and mulled over.

And I think this could be applied to different things. The idea that what we do, we can offer to the world with hypersensitivity to the microscope of our achievement, or with open hands and the honest level of where we're at. We weren't meant to live as if life is a performance. It's an unpredictable, up and down kind of grind that we can't play out beforehand. Ultimately, our life, our writing, our words, and our specialties, they were all a gift to us, intended to be practiced and given back.

Whether this looks like making a meal for someone because you love to cook. Or teaching your little cousin how to throw a football. Or making someone laugh because you've got some wit. Or singing for some older ones in a nursing home. Or checking someone's heartbeat with a stethoscope because you've got a knack for detail. Or, It might just look like simply smiling because you've been given lips.

Life is not a performance. We are living, breathing creatures set on this earth to be, to discover, and to reflect the glory of our Creator. We do not have to live under a pressure to perform. We can live freely in hope and discipline, with patience and endurance in joy.

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. (Galatians 5:13)

If you are in Christ Jesus, you have been granted freedom. Freedom to no longer live under the expectations of others, their thoughts and judgments. Freedom from the maintenance of a perfect self-image. Freedom to live in honesty, integrity, and conviction before your Father, and Him only. To love people humbly. To no longer strive for excellence in the measurement of the human eye, but to strive for knowing Him more. And to know what is the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ's love.

I urge you to stay grounded and rooted in the knowledge of all of the promises He has laid before you. And as you peer over all of them and begin to see the sacrifice and purest of pure before you, I pray that you then begin to worship. In all of the curves of your lips, in all of the work of your hands, in all of the ways you see and treat people.