**Who We Are**

I have had a couple of really interesting conversations lately. All having to do with “who we are”. As a Christian in recovery I’d like to think that I know who I am. What stuff I’m made of. I know my character defects. I know my strengths and my gifts and my talents. I know how to get safe and stay safe. I also know how close to the edge I can walk without falling off. But knowing all of these things about me brings me to my next interesting thought. Actually a question. If I know all about me. Why I do things the way I do. What is behind the behavior and what is propelling me to react or act to what is going on around me or inside me. And I am comfortable with that, meaning I really like who I am….why do I tend to hide and protect that person that I am created to be?? Why do I hide behind a wall? Why do I try to conceal certain parts of me from others that should be accepting of me?

My daughter Bekkah has been going thru a difficult time lately. About 5 wks ago she fessed up to cutting herself. This cutting phenomenon is a really tough thing for me to understand. Why would you cut into your skin to feel better? It just doesn’t make sense to me. It is just really weird. Anyway, Bekkah is back in counseling and trying to work thru her pain and issues. Part of the therapy has been for her to journal daily. I think that the journaling helps her to sort thru. It helps her to feel and release. She writes the most amazing poems. Her timing and sense of wording is incredible. She has a gift. My Bek shared these writings with me late last night.
Bek and I talked a lot about “who she is”. She said to me, “I don’t know who I am…why am I here”?? She is in pain and confused about a lot of stuff in her high school life. The relationships that she has with friends. Her boyfriend. Life in general is kicking Bekkah’s ass. We discussed “who she is” and some healthy things that she can do to take some power back into her life that has been stripped away by circumstances and relationships. Bekkah showed me another ‘side of her’ last night.

I think it’s all about self preservation and our longing to be accepted and loved. For Bek, I can speak love into her life and heart. I can encourage her that she is a wonderful girl created by God. I can encourage my kids as I always have to ‘think for themselves’ and to always remember that there is a God that loves them. And I can lay down the mindset and the standards that I set in my own life and heart for people to be accepted by me. I can keep walking this road of recovery and of Christ in the hopes that someday we will be free to be who we are. In the hope that Bek will be free to be who she is. Where I will be free to be who I am. And not worry about the way others perceive me. Someday.

I need people in my life like cut gemstones. Multi-faceted. I need the kind of people that every time you look at them….you see something else. They are always a surprise. Always interesting. That is the way that we were created to be. We are a masterpiece created by the Master's hands. We are not junk or mistakes. We are pieces of art.

So I have decided that no matter what, I need to keep walking in all my weirdness and unorthodoxy and be who I am. If I am constantly in a place emotionally where I feel as tho I have to keep my lid on, I am squelching God’s creation. I am masking who He created and hiding it. It can be scary as shit to open myself up and be transparent. But at this point in my life….what the hell am I waiting for? I think it’s harder to be what others want you to be than it is for me to just be who I am.