The reflection in the mirror is not overly attractive nor is it familiar. My usual strategy of retreat has been aborted despite the sirens blaring in my head. On this occasion I can't break eye contact. I have to look. I have to peer into his eyes and deeper still into the windows of his soul. Some twenty years have passed and to my embarrassment I have to admit to myself that I don't know him at all.
I have let so much time pass, yet at last we are getting acquainted. He is a pretty good guy after all, much kinder than I was led to believe. Sure he has his moments. For example, the other day when he lost his patience with everyone at work and just started acting like a jerk…complaining about everything and acting self-righteous. Oh…or how about a few weeks back when he sat around with a buddy saying some pretty cold things about a friend behind their back. Totally uncalled for. But you have to forgive him, he defiantly is far from perfect and but for the most part he is a good person. He loves his family, works hard and is a loyal friend.
I have to say it feels pretty good now that I'm getting to know myself a little better. I really did ignore me for so long. I guess in my experience the act I put on can be traced back to Sunday school. I was taught how a good boy was suppose to be, what I was and wasn't supposed to say and do. I was an astute kid anyways, I didn't really have to be taught it, I just had to watch the actions of all the adults around me, squirming in their pews, putting on fake smiles and trying to hold it all together until they could get to the car and have a cigarette.
I don't blame the church so much anymore. I realize we all try to be something or someone we are not, whether we were raised a Christian, Catholic, a banker's son or a teacher's daughter, middle class, or whatever. Whether we do it to please someone else or ourselves it is too exhausting trying to hold up appearances, to pretend, and to live a lie. What follows are some truths I have come to learn from, hold too and attempt to live by. Hopefully truths that will encourage you to gaze in the mirror and face yourself.
At times I, and maybe you have experienced this too, have struggle with the lie that God is not happy with the person I am. Now don't get the person I am and the life I am living confused. God will always love me the person, but won't always love the life I have chosen to live. Make sense? Sometimes in my self-loathing, pity party of a life I have these glimpses of the truth that God created me to be the person I am and he is happy with that. I think I disrespect Him in a way when I am unhappy about my life, my mistakes and even myself and continually compare myself to everyone else.
Although God loves us as we are that is not a license to be complacent. We should always strive to be better people and improve ourselves. But beware of self-help books! In my quest I have found that I'm not a big fan of books that promise some kind of life change in 7 easy steps. The titles are endless, the promises sound too good to be true and the results are almost guaranteed. Yes, maybe it took only 5 steps for the author to become financially secure or 10 steps for a person to forgive, but just because that approach worked for one person doesn't mean that it will work for anyone else.
Our relationship with God is said to be a personal one and God works in our lives in individual ways. If this is true than I don't want God to deal with me in a cookie cutter way that he used with someone else. I am a different person, with different feelings and needs. Fortunately God already knows this about me. He knows that it may take me 20 steps when it takes others only three. Yet he is patient with me because he knows me. He knows how to get lasting results and what I must go through to achieve them. Of course we might not always like how God chooses to mold our lives, instruct our minds or mature our souls. It can be the most painful time of our lives.
I have always liked the Bible passage that says "God turns all things to good for those who trust in Him". I don't fully understand it but I do believe it because sometimes it is all I have to hold onto. When life turns sour or things go wrong it is something I have to hold tight too and say, "Somehow God is going to use this for good". I admit there have been moments in my life where I have not seen these results as of yet. Although there isn't much sign of any good coming of it, I am still weakly holding on to Gods promise that something good will come from the tragedy or failure.
Dark secrets, shame, regrets and failure are things we all face in life. We either react by bury them or facing them. We can spend our whole lives hung up on a mistake we have made or even spend years in regret. There is nothing that can be done to erase a mistake, forget a failure or hide a sin. There is no way to turn back time and change things. Although there are things that stay with us, taunt us, mock us and maybe even hold us back, we have to take a positive view of it somehow. We learn from our mistakes no matter how painful they are.
Failure has the potential to make us stronger. Failure molds our character. I know there aren't many of us that would choose to go out and make a mess of life so they could learn from it and I'm not suggesting anyone should, that is just foolish. What I am saying is that if you have already made a mistake, or error than let it go. God is so much more merciful and forgiving than we are taught in church. He forgives you but the thing is you have to forgive yourself. God can turn our defeats into something positive. We need hide no longer.
We keep our failures chained and locked in the basement of our souls. Hidden from the world, but slowly it is rotting us away from the inside out. We bury our own dreams to please those around us, living a life that will never bring us happiness. We hold our tongue to keep a peace that we only imagine still exists. In the process we have lost our identity. We become someone we hardly recognize, maybe even someone we hate.
I have tried to please the world around me and I admit sometimes I still do. I was a seeker of a blessing from the church and at times I persist in my longing to be smiled upon. At my worse I have betrayed my very self. I traded the things I believe in to carry their membership card. To make it quite simple I lived a lie and I have to continue to guard myself from living a life that is not my own.
Every part of life can define who we are right now. We cannot erase any moment no matter how painful, hurtful, or damaging it was. We cannot and should not pretend that tragedy never stuck. We can choose however, how we approach those moments. What we take with us from them, what we learned and how we live because of those moments.
It is time to step out of the skin we have been hiding inside. It is time to look in the mirror and face ourselves.
Don't forget you're beautiful
Just the way you are
Change for you and not for me
I like who you are
DUg Pinnick singing "Beautiful"
No comments:
Post a Comment