What Happens When You Reach the Top and It Still Isn’t Enough?

Two people can share one life for years: the capable one everyone sees, and the hurting one who stays out of sight. Over one slow week, this guide asks how to stop living that way and bring the whole truth to God. The practice is a specific kind of self-examination. You will name your public self and your hidden self, sort what the hidden self is carrying, and bring it, a little at a time, toward the light John describes at the opening of his Gospel.

You can work through it alone with a notebook, or with a small group that meets once at the start of the week and once at the end. Nothing here requires you to tell anyone anything. What you write is for your eyes unless you choose otherwise.

The guide draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and Chantelle Anderson, who played in the WNBA for six years. Chantelle describes childhood years of abuse and neglect at home, a sexual assault she told no one about, self-harm, and a night she held a gun to her head. If any of that is close to your life right now, please set this guide aside. In the United States you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at any hour. If someone is hurting you, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. The study can wait.

Start with what you already know about yourself

Chantelle traces her split to a childhood realization that some things happening at home could not be shared outside it. After years of that, she says, “from that point on, I became two people.” One person lived at school and later in the spotlight. Another lived at home and alone.

Before reading any Scripture, take ten minutes for a first observation. Divide a page into two columns. Over the left write What people see. Over the right write What is actually going on. Fill in the left side first, because it is usually easier. Be concrete: the role you play at work, the answer you give when someone asks how you are, the version of you that posts online.

Then write on the right side, only as much as feels safe today. A single word is enough. Date the page, because you will return to it.

The left column is not always a lie. Chantelle’s talent was real, and colleges were writing to her every day, yet she says, “I felt like a fake.” The pain came from the distance between the columns and from having no place where both could be true at once. For the longest time, she says, “I just wanted to be one person again.”

Read the light slowly

Chantelle started reading the Bible in the Gospel of John before she believed it. She describes what happened this way: “I started reading the book and accidentally fell in love with the author.” Two verses from John’s opening stayed with her so firmly that she had them tattooed on her forearms.

Read John 1:1-9 aloud once, at an ordinary pace. Then read verses 4-5 again, very slowly. In the King James Version they say: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:4-5)

Work through these observations before deciding what the passage means for you:

• Who is “him” in verse 4? Look back at verses 1-3. John is talking about the Word, a person, not a feeling or a force.
• Where does the light shine, according to verse 5? Not beside the darkness, and not after the darkness leaves. In it.
• What does the darkness fail to do? The KJV word comprehended in John 1:5 can mean to grasp, either with the mind or with the hands, as in seizing something. That is why many other translations render it as the darkness has not overcome the light. Both senses fit John’s story: the world does not understand the Word, and it cannot master him.
• Now read verse 9: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (John 1:9) Why might John need the word “true”? What would a false light be?

Keep the order straight. John is first making a claim about who Jesus is: the source of life who entered a world that did not receive him. Applying that to your inner life comes second. It is still a fair application, because John says this light lights human beings.

What Chantelle saw in the contrast

Chantelle’s insight is about why she did not seek that true light sooner. Her life was full of brightness: attention, parties, access, money, high-profile relationships. She explains the trap: “when your life is so light, so filled with light, you don’t realize that the light is fake.” Then the confusion it caused: “I couldn’t see the darkness, but I felt the darkness inside.”

Her reading of John 1:5 followed. All the light in her life was outside her, and the darkness was inside, where outside light could not reach. Of Jesus she concluded, “I need to find a way to get him inside me, because that’s where the darkness is.”

That changes the self-examination you began. Effort can polish the left column and shrink the right one on paper, and the inside stays dark. Success, applause and a managed image shine on you. John is describing a light that shines in you, so the practice is about letting it into the right column.

A test: is the light a spotlight?

Here the practice meets its strongest resistance. For many people living as two people, light sounds like exposure, and a spotlight is exactly what the hidden self fears. Jesus names that fear in the same Gospel: “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” (John 3:20-21)

Read that carefully, because it is easy to misuse. Jesus is talking about deeds, things a person does. Much of what Chantelle hid was not her deed at all. The abuse and neglect at home and the assault before college were done to her. Shame tends to blur that line, so a person hides what happened to them as if it were their own wrongdoing. The light of Christ does not reprove a victim for being harmed.

So return to your right-hand column and gently sort it, marking each item with one letter:

• H for hurt: something done to you, or a loss you did not choose.
• C for coping: something you do to manage the hurt.
• F for feeling: what you carry inside, such as sadness, emptiness or fear.

Lisa Fields observes that many people are so used to drinking, smoking or sex that “they don’t even realize that they’re coping because of deep pain,” and she adds that “the activity is not coming from a place of health, it’s coming from a place of hurt.” That is why the C and H marks belong on the same page. Connecting a habit to the hurt beneath it does not excuse the habit. It shows you what you actually need to bring to God.

Then read Psalm 139:11-12: “If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” This is poetry, speaking in images, but its claim is plain. Nothing in your right column is news to God. Bringing it to him means agreeing to be seen by the one who already sees.

The practice for this week

Each day takes about ten minutes. If a day is too heavy, repeat the one before.

1. Day one: watch the public self. Once today, when you give a polished answer or perform competence, notice it. Do not stop doing it. Simply write down where and with whom.
2. Day two: watch for numbing. Chantelle describes catching herself after a long stretch on social media and telling herself, “Chantelle, you’re numbing right now. Stop it.” Then she asks herself, “what do I need to pray about.” Try that two-step check once today: notice what you reach for, then ask that question.
3. Day three: trace one line. Pick one item marked C. Draw a line to the H or F it most likely connects to. If you cannot find one, write I don’t know yet. That is an honest answer.
4. Day four: read John 1:4-5 over that line. With that one connection in front of you, ask what it would mean for the light to shine in that exact place.
5. Day five: speak to God without tidying it. Chantelle calls herself a logical thinker, yet she learned that “it’s okay to go to God and just cry your tears and not dry them before you’re done crying them.” Tell God about that one connection in plain words, aloud or on paper. You do not need to reach a conclusion.
6. Day six: rest. Leave the page alone. Notice whether the day felt any different.
7. Day seven, if you are ready: consider one person. Being one person does not mean telling everyone everything. It means there is no place where you must pretend. Some people will not be ready to involve anyone yet, and that is fine; skip this day without guilt. If you are ready, write down the name of one trustworthy person, such as a pastor, a counselor or a friend who is not impressed by your achievements, and decide whether and when to talk with them.

If what surfaces includes self-harm, an eating disorder, depression that will not lift, or memories of abuse, bring in a counselor or doctor. That is not a sign the practice failed or that your faith is weak. Getting trained help is one more way of refusing to keep that column in the dark.

For groups

In the first session, read John 1:1-9 together and work through the observation prompts, then let people make their columns privately. Never ask anyone to read their right column aloud. In the second session, talk about the practice itself, what was hard and what surprised people, rather than its contents. Some will joke their way past the subject because they are used to being the one who is fine. Make room without pressing.

Before you begin, know where to point people: the 988 Lifeline, a local Christian counselor, and a pastor. If someone says they are thinking of harming themselves, take it seriously, stay with them, and help them reach help that day. Do not promise secrecy when someone’s safety is at stake.

Questions to talk about or carry

• Chantelle says the brightness of her life kept her from recognizing her need. What in your life works like outside light, making the inside harder to notice?
• John 1:5 says the light shines in the darkness, not after it is gone. Does that sound like comfort to you, or like a threat? Why?
• When you sorted your hidden column into hurt, coping and feeling, what was hardest to label, and what made it hard?
• John 3:20-21 speaks of coming to the light. In your experience, what is the difference between being exposed and being seen?
• Chantelle had to accept that she was not in control: “if I’m not in control, then I need to follow the one who is.” Where is your two-person life a way of keeping control?
• What would being one person look like in a single ordinary setting, such as work, home or church? What would have to change, and what would not?

At the end of the week

Read both columns on the page you dated, and add one line at the bottom about what you understand now that you did not before. Maybe one item has a line drawn to it that was not there on the first day. Maybe nothing has moved, and you simply know its shape better.

Chantelle now says that “the person I am in private can be the same person I am in public.” That came to her over years, through Scripture, grief and people who walked with her, and no one can promise you a schedule. What a week can do is let the light reach one place you have kept dark, and show you that the darkness did not win there.