Welcome to second installment of the Why I'm Quiet series!
I'm 26 years old. When I was 20 years old, I remember telling a friend that I hoped to get married around the age of 27. So I've got a year left, then. Can it still happen? Sure. Does it look like it will? Not really. Am I being pessimistic? Nah. Because the more I dig deeper into my relationship with God, and the more I reflect on my life and who I am, the more I realize how unready I am for marriage....man, that sounds pessimistic too...let me explain:
I don't know who I am. Honestly. If you were to ask me to tell you who I am, I wouldn't know what to say? Yes, I could tell you things about myself--I'm 26 years old, I'm a Christian, I live in Los Angeles and work in Orange County, I like to hike, my favorite color is green, and I could eat Oreo cookies till they killed me--but none of that is really who I am. Those are just details, and details can change. A little over a year ago, I lived in Atlanta, and before that, Michigan. Last year I was 25, next year I'll be 27. I heart Oreos but I never buy them anymore because they're just not healthy in large quantities (they're like potato chips; I can't eat just one).
Then what makes me me? My personality? Gosh, I hope not. When I think about my personality, I kind of feel like the lawyer from the movie Rat Race, Harold Grisham, who was described as being "tragically born without a personality." I don't express a lot of emotion. There are reasons and slowly God is helping me to let go of them (something I need to write about one of these days), but whether I'm happy or sad, joyful or angry, in a good mood or bad, it's pretty difficult to tell just my looking at me. And yes, I wish this wasn't the case. But anyways...
When I think back over my life, I can recall countless times, especially from high school on, when I would look to my friends for answers to the questions, "who am I?" "what should I be like?" "how should I act?" I think by the time I got tired of my friends wondering why I was quiet, I felt like I didn't know how to act around them anymore. I didn't know what was cool or uncool, what would earn their approval and what would get me laughed at (which was one of the biggest reasons I went quiet in the first place). So I would watch my friends, study their behaviors, the jokes they made, the way they talked, and I would try to sort of impersonate them, but not so much that anyone could tell. I tried to be like them because I figured it was safer than being me...of course it was, because I didn't know who I was, and if I tried to be just me, who knew how people might react?
As I've said before, I struggle with the irrational fear of being judged. And it led me to the point where I felt more comfortable trying to be other people than just being myself...which might explain a bit why I have very little trouble getting up on stage in front of huge crowds and acting; I could get up in front of people and deliver a monologue without a problem, but ask me to stand up and deliver a speech and I'll close up like a farm house preparing for a storm.
I'm not sure what eventually woke me up to the realization that trying to be like everyone else wasn't a solution to finding my personality--maybe I just got tired of trying, or maybe I just began to see that they were all someone I couldn't be and maybe that's okay--but somewhere along the way I decided to stop imitating life and start living it myself...and I wish I could say it's gone well so far, but in all honesty, it's really just going very slowly.
I'm 26 years old, and I don't really know who I am, because I've been so careful not to let the world see the real me that I've lost sight of the real me, myself. I've spent so much time looking to the world to define me that when I finally realized it can't and I look at myself to see who I really am, I find nothing. Just a mostly blank canvas with a few flecks of paint scattered about.
Who am I?
Moses asked that question once back in Exodus 3. Granted, there was more to the question and the context is totally different than the one I'm in, but it's all I can think of right now, so we'll go with it. God was talking to Moses through that burning bush, telling Moses about all the crazy stuff he was about to be sent off to do, and Moses replied, "Who am I...?"
Moses was an 80 year old man who ran away from home when he was 40 and spent all those years since as a shepherd, probably feeling about himself the way I sometimes feel, like you've just screwed up so much in trying to do things your own way in your own time that running away from the problems is just the best solution. Only he took it to a level I thankfully never have: he ran off and spent 40 years hiding with sheep. And then God showed up.
Not to say He wasn't always there all along. But God speaking to me through a burning bush would, in my opinion, be something I would describe to people as "God showing up."
God interrupted Moses' decades of sulking and told him who he had been created to be: the guy meant to lead Israel to freedom. And Moses' response? "Who am I...?" He didn't know. He felt like a no body. He'd messed up, he'd found a safe place to hide where he wasn't hurting anyone anymore, and that was probably fine by him...mostly. But see, I don't believe any of us can be truly happy hiding. If so, I think Moses would have heard God's request and just said, "no thanks, I'm good," then put his sandals back on and walked away. But he didn't, and I haven't either. I've tried. Believe me, I've tried to just say, "I give up. This is stupid. It's too hard, it doesn't make any sense, I don't understand what you're up to, God, or where you're leading me or why you're doing all this. Life was easier when I wasn't trying. Can't I just go back to that?" But before I can walk away, I always find this desire in my heart to keep my focus on God, because I think like Moses, I know that this hiding isn't where I was created to be. It might be easier, but dude, it is boring. And sheep are no fun to talk to, really.
God knew who Moses was, who He had created him to be, and it was through God that Moses came to learn who he really was. Not some failed Hebrew/Egyptian prince turned sheep herder, but a man so perfectly prepared and placed to free the nation of Israel from captivity. Which gets into a whole other side of things: waiting = good(usually). But yeah, some other time.
And that's what I want. No, not to spend 40 years in the desert herding animals while waiting around for a bush to catch fire and talk to me (I'd probably just start setting bushes on fire around year 20 out of sheer boredom, hoping each time something different would happen; "maybe this time it won't burn up!"). I want God to be the one to tell me who I am. I want to find myself in Him, not in the world. Because this world can be cruel and dishonest and judgmental and it can even be out to keep me from being who I'm supposed to be, who God created me to be. God made me, which means no body knows me better than He does. He knows me, He knows why He made me and what it is He would like me to do, and that's what I want: I want what He wants for my life.
And I wish He'd just tell me right now so I can go get ready for it. Because like many people, I like to know ahead of time what's going to happen so I can make preparations, make sure all the details are worked out and everything is ready. But God, I'm learning, doesn't work like that. He's all for making us wait, having us sit tight and just wait for the next little nugget of insight to come along. Why? Because if He told us everything in advance, then we'd just be like, "Thanks, God, I've got it from here." And we'd go off on our own without any further need of Him, accomplish everything we were meant to, and take all the credit ourselves. Which isn't cool. Think about a child who, after growing up in a loving home, moves away, makes a successful life for himself, and never looks back to thank those who taught him along the way, who helped him to get to where he is today. He never calls home, never writes, never visits on the holidays, never credits his parents for all they taught him growing up. He just looks at his success and thinks, "Look what I've accomplished."
So I don't really know who I am, and that's the second reason I'm quiet. But I'm looking to God to help me discover who it is He's created me to be, and I really look forward to what He's got to teach me. I'm sure it's going to be tough to learn at times, but I don't really care, because the more difficult it is, the more worth it it must be.
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