Deciding To Be Myself

So often in the last few weeks, I have heard the resounding message, "Embrace who you were created to be." When you hear the same thing every time you turn around, it's hard to ignore and I have been thinking about it a lot.

Accepting who you have been created to be is something that everyone struggles with. Look at any adolescent and you'll see them either trying to be alike or trying so hard to be different that they all end up being alike in their differences.

Faith and I picked up "Stellaluna" by Janell Cannon during our last trip to the library. As I was reading the book to her, that same theme came through Stellaluna's story.

Stellaluna is a bat who is separated from her mother and is raised in a family of birds. She is forced to stop what comes naturally to her, hanging upside down and eating fruit, in exchange for sleeping at night and eating insects. When her mother finds her and returns her to "bat life", she discovers how much easier her life is doing what she was made to do. When her adoptive bird siblings visit her and try Stellaluna's bat ways, they find themselves in danger because they are acting in ways they were never meant to.

I have lived out the discomfort of trying to be someone I am not. I have suffered the consequences of trying to do things that I was not meant to do.

We look at others and want what they have; talent, looks, personality, family background, personal experience. The list could go on and on. But, these are things that we do not choose, they are handed out to us. And, I believe that they are not random, we are specifically planned to be who we are.

King David said that God knits us together in the womb (Psalm 139:13). I don't knit, but it looks like very intricate work to me; work that has a design and shape when it is started.

I recently heard Joyce Meyer say this:

"We're always looking at somebody else, thinking that they're the epitome of what we should be. God is never going to help you be somebody else. You might as well decide to like yourself because if He wanted you to be somebody else, then you would be somebody else."

I don't know if it has to do with age, having children of my own or my life right now, but I am becoming more comfortable with this idea. I do not claim to have total peace with who I am, but I am beginning to a) know who I am and who I was created to be and b) kind of like who that person is.

I see this as freedom and the best path to the fulfilled and abundant life that Jesus has promised us (John 10:10). Embracing who we are embraces God's sovereignty and will in our lives. When I have done that, He has never failed to fulfill His promises to me.

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. ~Psalm 139:13

I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows). ~Jesus, John 10:10