On Being Who You Are
I was standing in line at the store the other day and
there was this boy, maybe 8, dancing around, oblivious to where he was or who
was around. His harried Mom scolded him, which didn't seem to faze him at all,
so the level of her tone changed until, inevitably, she got his attention and
the dancing stopped. She leaned in and spoke words I could not hear, but
understood none the less. The boy looked doubtful and I thought, “Yes, kid,
never stop dancing!”
It seems from
almost the beginning of our lives we are taught to be something other than who
we are. Our personalities are chiseled and chipped at until we conform to what
our parents and our community thinks we should be. Their values are instilled
in us, which can be good, but at the expense of our personalities, I think that
can be bad.
Because there is something more about being who we are…I
mean the deep down who we are. The person we were created to be, the person we are when no one else is around. The
person you are (were) before the world got a hold of you. Do you know who that
person is? Are you comfortable with them? Is this the person you show to the
world, or do you show a carefully constructed version?
Being a Christian, I am confronted frequently with the
carefully constructed versions of who people are. In church, we shouldn't be
afraid to just be who we are, right? But there seems to be an unspoken rule
that we have to be happy and have it all together when we go to worship God.
When I was a fairly new Christian, there was a greeter who would always greet
you enthusiastically. She’d ask how you were. “Fine. How are you?” And she’d
say, with a small head tilt, “Blessed.” And I always just wanted to poke her in
the eye. Because it was so fake. She didn't care how I was doing and maybe her
life was blessed, but seriously? That’s your answer every time? Or the classic
hand shake pull. You know what I’m talking about if you've ever entered a
church. The person at the door extends their hand to you, so you go to shake
it, and instead of a warm greeting, they pull you through the doorway. Okaay.
And I’m not just bagging on greeters here. I think it’s a symptom of that
carefully constructed facade we have for ourselves and others that keeps real interaction from happening.
This is why I appreciate my friend Jim so much. He should
really be the poster boy for being who you are. When you ask him how he’s
doing…he tells you. Good. Bad. Or anything in between, he’ll tell you. He’s
real. When he prays, there is no fuss or muss. He talks to God how he talks to
everyone else. The first time I heard him pray was on a mission trip to Rocky
Point and I couldn't help but open my eyes and look at him, a huge smile on my
face. It went something like this: “God. You love us. Man. How do you do that?
That’s so cool. You sent your Son for us? We don’t deserve it, but You did it
anyway! Cool!” Jim hates shoes and goes barefoot whenever he can. He is
forgetful and mixes stuff up. He does a million things at once and would give
you the shirt off his back. He loves his wife and family. He will tell you
straight out what he thinks. He is who
he is and there is no pretense. He doesn't take your facade either. If he asks how you are and you say, "fine". He asks again.
If we could all be that comfortable with ourselves,
right?
And here’s why; God made us exactly who we are. He made
us each different…no two of us are alike, even identical twins have different
personalities. He made me to go out into
the world and be…me. Not you, not anyone else, but me. So why do we struggle so with who we are? Is it that
distant voice from childhood telling us “don’t”? Why do we look in the
mirror and not like what we see? And I’m not just talking about how we look,
but that yearning we have for wanting to be different than who we truly are.
The Jims of the world are so refreshing aren't they? And how boring would the
world be if we were all alike anyway. Nothing would ever get done! We’re all gifted
differently Ephesians tells us, and rightly so, so why do we seem to struggle
with who we are?
And, I get it. We all have had someone, maybe a close
someone, maybe a not so close someone, comment on who we are. “You’re too
_____________” and fill in the blank with whatever they said about you. Or
we were just being ourselves and were happy doing it, only to have someone rejects
us outright. Or we really wanted to fit in with a group and they just never
accepted you. They were nice to you, but would walk away to go off and do
whatever it was they were going to do, leaving you wondering why they didn't
just invite you along as well.
All of these things cause us to doubt ourselves and even
if you have a strong self-worth and don’t really care about what others think,
these situations causes a sting that we want to fix right away. Because it
hurts to think that who we are isn't good enough.
Even the strongest of people will go through points in life
where they lose who they are. The loss of a close friendship, a divorce, or a
bad break-up can cause us to question everything and make us lose sight of who
we are. And when we are lost, we unfortunately can let others define us. We can let their words or judgments
shame us because we, essentially, believe we are divorced or lost that
friend because of who we are. Because the underlying theme becomes that because you
are who you are, you don’t deserve love.
This is what I believed after my divorce. If only I was
someone else, this wouldn't have happened to me. But, no. I am divorced because my husband broke every
vow. He didn't love, honor, or cherish. He bolted at the first signs of
sickness and did not forsake all others. And I ended up confusing what I was (a wife, a divorced woman)
with who I was.
And I wish I could sit here and tell you that I figured
that out quickly and went on my merry way. Um, no. I made soul crushing
mistakes putting on that façade and pretending to be who I thought the world
wanted me to be. And it was exhausting. Because I would edit myself. And it was straight up fear. Fear that I would
be rejected again for being who I am. And when people do pull away or reject
you again, it’s not because you are being who you are, it’s because you aren’t being who you are. People know when we are not being real with
ourselves and with them. All the work we put into these façades and people see
right through them anyway.
So, it becomes a gift when someone likes us just for who
we are; a sweet precious gift. And it happens by accident sometimes. Through
all the heartache of my divorce, there were some wonderful people who liked me
in spite of my intense sadness and self-loathing. Most were from work. I think that is why work friends seem to
really stick…because they see you eight hours a day and really, you can’t fake
a personality for forty hours a week. My work friends knew when I was cranky,
knew when I was happy, knew when they should just stay out of my way. They knew
I was honest, fair, kind. That I like to laugh, don’t like to be interrupted,
and that stress kicks my butt. They knew when I needed a break, a hug, or a bag
of peanut M&M’s. They knew if I said I was sick, that I was really, really,
sick. And they knew they could come to me for anything. They taught me it was
okay to be who I was. That just because I was going through this horrible
thing, I was still me, and that they liked me. Seriously, a precious gift.
But let’s not confuse being who we truly are with the
thought that if we are, everyone will like us. We need to realize that some
people just aren't going to like us. They’re just not. Your personality will
rub them the wrong way and there is nothing you can do about it. And there is
that temptation to try and get them to like you, and sometimes we get lost in
that space, don’t we? Because we start to change who we are for someone who
doesn't even like us and that is dangerous ground. Someone once told me to be
careful not to cross an ocean for someone who wouldn't cross a puddle for me.
What wise words. Because we can start to go overboard before we realize what we
are doing. We start to compromise who we are for someone who isn't worthy of us.
Why? Because we want to matter. We want to be important
to people. We want to matter in their lives. No one likes to hear someone say,
“Oh, we’re going to meet our good friends,” as they walk away from you. And that’s the thing about being brave enough
to just be who we are. When we become who we are, we will matter to the right
people.
At one of my birthday dinners, my dear friend and I were
talking about how we got to be 50, the roads that led us to where we are right
now and our divorces came up. She had
sent her ex-husband a note about one of their sons and said that he, and the
world, wants to pretend that entire marriage never happen and asked what, as a
participant in the marriage, did that mean for her? Did those years and those
boys not mean anything? I knew exactly what she meant. They mattered. The marriage had mattered. The
ripping apart of a family is excruciating and the ripples extend for a long
time. You see the ripples in your kids and there is no pain like that, let me
tell you. But that ripping does not take away the marriage or the family it
created. It mattered greatly.
And mattering is what I struggle with in my marriage to
Jon. Because there are very few who see that it mattered at all. So I have
grieved alone in all of it. We met seven years after my divorce and he did give
me that precious gift of liking me for just who I was. I had reached the place
of knowing, this is who I am, this is what I want, and that is a strong place
to be. He liked my quirks, he liked that I spoke my mind. He liked that I saw
him, not ALS. We were in love and despite his having that horrible disease, we
married. That he left shortly after we married doesn't negate anything. Anything. He regretted it almost as soon as he had left
but continued to push me away in an effort to protect me. When the full
explanation came, a few months before he died, I wept for us, for what could
have been, and for the joy we missed out on. What gave me peace, though, was
that I had mattered to him. He had loved me for who I was and I mattered.
be u tiful
ReplyDeleteThank you. : )
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