Psalm 8 - Finding Yourself

The whole concept of “finding yourself” sort of implies that you have actually lost yourself somewhere along the journey. I have spent more than half of my natural life here on this earth already and I am still trying to figure out the complexity of who I really am. Just when I have thought that I had come to a reasonable conception of that, curves came my way that made me question if I really had an objectively clear picture of “me”. I totally know who I WANT to be. But, just like Paul says in his epistle….I do what I don’t want to do and I don’t do what I want to do. I realize as a result of my own desire to please others that at times I have allowed them to define me. As a little girl, my parent’s perceptions of me and their words embedded in my ears caused me to own their view of who I was. As you grow older, you begin to be hugely impacted by your peers. To some degree I feel like I had a strength to not be swayed by the peer pressure that so hugely affects most adolescents. I didn’t give into many of the vices that my friends got caught up into because of a certain moral fiber that was inexplicable part of my soul. I truly believe that it was God’s call on my life to which I was responding. However, that refusal to conform and join in subtly began to create a certain “less than” sense of worth within me. Without intention and without realizing it…I was slowly losing a clear picture of who I really was and began owning a warped perception formulated by others. That distortion caused me to focus on what others were thinking and feeling about me rather than correctly focusing on the contentedness of who I was becoming and the excitement of the possibilities of what I could be about. The irony is that I was giving power to define me to the people, society in general, who knew me least. Plus, the greater irony was that it was just what I was assuming they were thinking rather than what they were truly thinking about me! Would it not make much more sense to give the power to define me to the One who actually knows me best because He created me? Shouldn’t I be listening past the din of marketing ads directed at making me feel like I need their product to make a better me and hear the voice of the One who truly loves me unconditionally? There is a saying, “You would worry less about what people thought about you if you realized how seldom they actually do”. It is true and sad at the same time. It implies that we live in a world where people are so self-absorbed as a result of their own insecurities that they don’t have the time or energy to give to others. People spend unlimited amounts of money trying to mold their external being into something that society has deemed as beauty. In that quest, they often forget that beauty actually lies within. I forget that! I look at the magazines. I look at the television and movies. I look in the mirror and compare and see less than. I see time etching its mark on my face and body and I mourn the loss. That brings me back to who I WANT to be. I want to look in a mirror and see past all of the physical imperfections that I really had nothing to do with because they came with the genetic code when I was born and see a beautiful heart that lies within. My physical being was knit in my mother’s womb. I can adorn it with all kinds of clothes, jewelry, makeup…whatever. But, it is the physical body that I was dealt. Sure, I could spend lots of money changing whatever, but eventually it just decays and returns to dust. So, why not invest in something eternal. That is the heart attitude that I am choosing. My earthly investment is those that God has given me to love and to walk life with. I want to freely give of who I am and what I possess, actually what I possess as a result of what He has blessed me with, to those who He places in my life. I want to not be so focused on myself that I miss hearing their needs, not just their monetary needs but the needs of their soul. I want to love well. When God says to me, “Well done, good and faithful servant; I want to know that it wasn’t so much what I have DONE, but the lives that I have impacted along the way. Maybe finding yourself IS actually about losing yourself…..losing yourself in Him.