Lately I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the person I am and more importantly the person I want to be. The expression that God isn't finished with us yet is certainly a fact. We grow, change, and evolve all the time. Every life event imprints on us and can reshape the person we are. Notice I said CAN. It doesn't have to be that way.
It is easy to watch the storms of life batter our little lifeboats to pieces and allow ourselves to sink beneath the waves. Sometimes we are fortunate and someone throws us a life preserver. Other times we have to reach deep within ourselves and find the courage to swim like crazy to shore.
It is said that no man is an island unto himself. How true is this. Just as we as humans cannot exist without others of our kind, so do the things that affect us ripple out to others. Everything that happens to us not only has a lasting effect on us personally, it also reaches out and touches others.
I spent a great deal of my life mad, sad, depressed, upset, regretful, resentful and on and on. So many of my character traits hurt people around me. A marriage was ruined, children were hurt and I was too selfish and stubborn to learn. I absolutely refused to accept that I had a hand in the things that went wrong.
Of course, eventually I grew up mentally. I came to realize that I had made an awful mess of things. Then the fun really began. I took all of that bad stuff that had happened, shoved it in big old trunk and placed it on my shoulders and began to carry it around with me. The weight of all that guilt, sadness and hurt was enormous and it caused me to sink lower and lower until it finally crushed me.
I never believed it when people told me I was talented, smart, funny, beautiful and valuable. But when the old devil told me I was worthless, ugly, evil and responsible for everything bad that happened....I sure believed him. After all, he was holding up the mirror I was used to looking in and it only confirmed what I believed about myself.
Maybe because I so desperately want to be a better child of God, I decided to give faith a chance. I was much older but I still had loads of people in my life that I loved and wanted to be better for. And they deserved to have the best me I could give them. Even though tons of crap had been sent down the tube, I still had a shovel and was willing to work. I couldn't change yesterday, it had disappeared into history. Tomorrow, was a different story. Tomorrow had not yet been written, I could make my own history with the work I did.
And work it was. Everyday when I woke up I had to make myself look in the mirror and see the person I despised the most. And I had to tell that person that I loved them and was glad to see them. I also had to make myself find one good thing about waking up and living another day. That thing that I found each day had to be packed away in my heart and repeated over and over again. I had to fight the urge to be down on myself and others, learn to be more tolerant of other people's shortcomings and I had to grant myself absolute forgiveness.
I was fortunate. I had people who were valuable to me that I was willing to fight for. Sure it makes me sad that my kids didn't have THIS mother when they were growing up. I can't change that, but I can try to be what they need today. It makes me sad that I wasn't THIS wife before. But I have a spectacular husband who deserves to have the wife I have become. It makes me sad that I didn't try to understand my mother and realize that she fought demons of her own. I wish I could have been a daughter she could be proud of. But fortunately she is still living and she can be proud of me now. I wish I could have been a better friend. It is impossible to have friends without first being a friend. I am blessed that I have a few good friends who love me in spite of who I've been before.
I want to be happy, I want to be valued for my intelligence and common sense, I want to be loved. I want a lot of things but I've come to realize that in order to have all the things I want, I have to give them away. More than anything else I don't want to look back on my whole life and realize that I wasted even one precious moment feeling sorry for myself, being mad, or unhappy. Life is a gift and no matter how badly we wrap it, it is still a treasure of great worth. We can waste it or we can use it. We need to remember that others are watching how we unwrap our gift and it will influence how they view their own.
So, my goal is to continue to look in the mirror and decide if I'm seeing the person I am or the person I want to be. Hopefully, one day both those people will be one and the same.
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