When God Won’t Let You Pretend Anymore
The terrifying freedom of discovering your true identity
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts..."
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It
The spotlight burned hot against my skin as I stepped onto the stage and into yet another character. I collected identities like costumes, slipping in and out of who I needed to be. Each role felt more real than the last, until I couldn't find where the character ended and I began.
I didn't know it then, but I was disappearing behind all those borrowed faces. I had no idea who I was.
You may know this feeling; not the stage fright, but the soul fright. You've worn so many masks you can't remember your real face. You've answered to so many names that your true one, if it ever existed, feels lost in the noise.
Even my given name carried no weight. Kim. Not Kimberly. Just Kim, after some Hollywood actress my father liked. No family legacy or meaning whispered in prayer. Only a label as empty as the roles I played.
So I gathered other names.
Achiever
Performer
The one who never disappoints
Each costume fit perfectly until the lights dimmed and I stood alone, wondering who remained when the audience went home.
The Night Everything Shifted
Scripture knows this ache. Jacob wrestled all night with a stranger who demanded, "What is your name?" (Genesis 32:27). Such a simple question, yet it cut to the core. Jacob—the deceiver, the heel-grabber, the one who'd spent his life wearing his brother's blessing like stolen clothes. In speaking his name aloud, he confessed who he'd become.
But God didn't leave him there. "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome" (Genesis 32:28, NIV). In one breath, God acknowledged the wrestler Jacob was, and declared the prince he would become. Like Jacob, I faced the raw truth of my own hidden self, unable to hide anymore.
I didn't know God the night He came for me or that He was in the business of renaming, of stripping away false identities to reveal true ones. All I knew was that something inside me had shattered, and the pieces didn't fit back together.
He didn't arrive with condemnation, though He had every right. Instead, He came with clarity that felt like surgery without anesthesia. Every false name I'd gathered, every role I'd hidden behind, every identity I'd constructed, He named them for what they were: shields against the truth and graves I'd mistaken for gardens.
The weight of it all should have crushed me. But in that moment of complete exposure, when I stood before God with nothing left to hide behind, He didn't turn away. The same God who saw through every performance had already sent His Son to die for the performer. The cross tells the story I didn't understand fully that night.
God names our sin not to destroy us but to free us. Jesus’ love demonstrated on the cross paid for every false identity I'd worn like armor against the truth.
The night I met God, He helped me see more than my sin. He helped me see the gap between who I pretended to be and who I truly was to Him, between the names I'd collected and the daughter He'd created.
When Truth Becomes Freedom
Here's what shattered my carefully constructed world. The One who exposed every false thing about me was the same One who loved me most. Like the woman at the well who heard Jesus name her five husbands and her current arrangement, I discovered that being fully known didn't mean being rejected (John 4:16-18). It meant being set free.
Moses understood this paradox. When God called from the burning bush, Moses asked for God's name. The answer came like thunder: 'I AM WHO I AM' (Exodus 3:14)—the God who needs no explanation, no qualification, no external validation, whose very existence defines reality.
I AM knows your name. Not the ones you've collected like armor or branded on your heart. He knows the name He whispered when He dreamed you into being.
Peter discovered this the hard way. Bold, impulsive Simon, who swore he'd never deny Christ, then crumbled at a servant girl's question. After the resurrection, Jesus found him back at his boat, wrapped in his old identity as a fisherman. "Simon son of John," Jesus called using his old name, meeting him in his shame. Then, three times, once for each denial, Jesus restored him, saying, "Feed my sheep" (John 21:15-17). Jesus didn't create the Rock with just a word. He forged it in the fire of failure and restoration.
The Names That Remain
Years have passed since the night God stripped away my false names. The girl who disappeared behind borrowed faces finally knows who she is and whose she is. Still, old habits don't die easily. It's a daily choice to answer to what God calls you instead of what fear whispers.
Some mornings I still wake wrapped in old names.
Failure
Not enough
Too much
They cling like grave clothes, familiar in their weight. Then I remember Lazarus, stumbling from the tomb, still wrapped in death's wardrobe. "Take off the grave clothes and let him go," Jesus commanded (John 11:44, NIV).
This is resurrection life—daily letting God unwrap and strip away what death dressed us in, learning to walk free in His light. Some days the grave clothes feel tighter than others. Yet, God's patient hands keep working, His voice keeps calling, until 'Beloved' drowns out every lie.
Your false names may feel permanent, tattooed by time and repetition, but in God’s economy, prostitutes become ancestors of grace, liars become fathers of faith, and murderers become deliverers.
And you? What grave clothes is God waiting to unwrap? What name is He whispering that you're not yet brave enough to believe?
The stage lights have long since dimmed on my performing days. In the quiet moments when I'm most myself, I hear it, my real name, spoken by the One who knew it before I drew breath.
Not the performer.
Daughter
Not the achiever.
Redeemed
Not the one who never disappoints.
Beloved
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." —Galatians 2:20 (NIV)
Listen closely. Maybe, just maybe, He’s whispering yours too.
