November 26, 2025 Calling “turkey bacon” by that name is an affront to real bacon. As part of my ongoing efforts to eat better and exercise, I decided to prepare enough breakfast wraps to last me a few days. Normally, I make breakfast wraps with just egg, spinach and cheese, but looking to add a bit more protein and a bit more flavor to breakfast, I grabbed a package of turkey bacon the last time I was at the grocery store. “I’ll try anything once,” I thought. After cooking a batch of eggs and steaming a bunch of spinach, I started frying my turkey bacon, and I assembled my breakfast wraps. I ate the first wrap the next morning. I’m sure there are people who love turkey bacon. I am not among them. If you asked me to describe it, I would say “thin strips of bacon bologna intended for frying.” It was missing everything that makes bacon bacon – the smokey, salty flavor and crispy texture. “I think I dislike it even more because they call it ‘bacon.’ If they presented it as what it really is, it would be fine,” I told a friend. “Turkey bacon is fraud.” While my turkey bacon rant was meant to be more entertaining than complaining, it got me thinking about authenticity – presenting ourselves as we really are. I think we all sometimes present ourselves as something we’re not. We present ourselves as confident when we’re really scared. We present ourselves as excited to attend an event that we’re really attending out of a sense of obligation… It occurred to me that I sometimes do it in my prayer life, too. I’ll pray for some intention, and I’ll pray “but not my will be done, God. Let your will be done.” I don’t’ really mean that. I want my will to be done. It’s almost like there’s part of my brain that says, “if you present it in a way that makes you seem super pious and like you’ve surrendered it to God, maybe God will do what you want.” So, I present myself to God as pious as though He doesn’t know I’m really a manipulative jerk. That’s been my focus of the week – presenting myself to God as I really am in prayer, asking for what I want to ask for and saying to God what I feel like I need to say. God knows my heart. I don’t need to pretend to be something I’m not. I’ll leave the pretending to the “turkey bacon.” |
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