Skip to main content

Who Were You Made to Be?

I have a pet peeve. I have a pet passion. As you might expect, they're polar opposites.

My pet passion is simple: be who God made you to be. You don't have to be anyone else. You don't have to live up to anyone else's expectations. You don't have to answer to anyone's judgments of you except God's. He's the One to whom you answer. We only have so many years on this earth. I want to do something with those years. I have a t-shirt that says: "You have one life. Do something." I want my life to make a difference. My name may not go down in history, but if I love passionately, if I obey the call of God for ME, I will affect other lives. That's all I want - to affect at least one other life in a positive, life-giving, life-changing way. In order to do that, I have to be who God made me to be. I have to do what God made me to do.

We're all so different. That's on purpose. We all need what each other has to give.

I've lived most of my life with the heavy burden of pleasing everyone. I continue to struggle with it. I hate confrontation. I hate animosity. I hate conflict. I want to keep the peace at all costs, but I've learned that the cost is too high. The cost is me - a clump of me here, a strand there. Before I realized it, there was little of me left. I had stopped listening to God, not on purpsoe. I was just too busy listening to everyone else.

Now I know. I KNOW I'm supposed to write. I don't know what will happen with my writing, but it's what I have to do. I can't not write. I know I'm not in the mainstream of life anymore - American life anyway. I have to make definitive choices. I have to make time to write. There are only so many hours in a day and only so many days to any one life. I want to purposely use that time to live my life. Not someone else's and not someone else's idea of what mine should be.

My pet peeve? Very simply: People who play God. People who manipulate and control. We all have opinions, but we don't have to push our opinions on those around us. What is it that makes it so difficult for some to let others live their own life? What is it that makes some think they know what's best for everyone?

Be who God made you to be.
Let everyone else do the same.

Comments

  1. Preach it,sis! I know I was just gonna read the one about Dad, but I got carried away. You write; I read. Deal.

    love,
    Dy

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tricia's Return (my first ICL assignment for 13-17 year olds)

I stormed down the hall and slammed the door. I’d had enough! Dumping my books out of my backpack, I began shoving in clothes – anything I could grab. I dug through the junk on the floor of my closet and found my stash – my life’s savings. I shoved it on top of my clothes. In the midst of this frenzy, I heard a soft knock on my door. "Tricia?" It was my mom. “What now?” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice. She was just going to launch into another tirade. Her list of my shortcomings was endless, and I didn’t want to hear them anymore. I didn’t open the door; I climbed out my window, backpack in tow, grabbed my bike and took off for the bus station. Jeremy didn’t know I was coming. He’d be so surprised. I couldn’t wait to see him! We’ve been together for a year; but since his family moved to St. Louis four months ago, we haven’t seen each other. We haven’t even been able to talk much He'd made the varsity soccer team; and with all the games and practices, he hadn’t h...

How Do You Wait?

The barren one is now in her sixth month.  Not one promise from God is empty of power  for nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1: 37 The Passion Translation I've never thought that much about Elizabeth. Gabriel speaks here to Mary - the mother-to-be of none other than GOD Himself! Who has a thought to spare for this side character in THE story of divine visitation? God come to earth. Wow. Talk about a headline for the New York Times! Why does Gabriel even mention Elizabeth? I don't know, but I'm glad he did.  I read these verses with a different perspective this morning.  "The barren one." Elizabeth is now past childbearing years. It's not a secret. Everyone in her community knows she's barren (it's obvious). The life part of her life is over. There is no hope for her to have her dream - a life like her friends have. She's different from her family, her neighbors. In a time when children are everything, she has nothing.  And now it's too late...

Rethinking My Rightness

I used to label myself as a conservative Christian. Used to. Lately, I'm almost ashamed to even be called a "christian" (that lowercase "c" is on purpose). It seems that over the last eight to ten years, being "christian" has become more about being right than about being Christ-like. It's more about enforcing a perceived level of moral behavior that has nothing to do with a person's heart (what was that Jesus said about a "whitewashed tomb" in Matthew 23:27?). Being "christian" has become more about power, control, and supremacy than it is about loving your neighbor or your God. I'm deeply saddened by the current "christian" focus on the sins of others (LGBTQ anyone?), by the lack of humility, by the pain inflicted (knowingly and unknowingly) on those who are unlike us. I've recently seen the ugliness of my own whitewashed tomb. I don't like it. I cried to see that my heart contains such haughtiness an...