Authentic Me?...

Sometimes I miss my original self...  The person I was when I was small and life was good, and people were good and my future was wide open and I could feel excitement about everyday.  Don't get me wrong, I still have a great life and there are a lot of things that excite me about my life and future.  But over the past 6-ish years, I've become increasingly disappointed and cynical with people.  It's kind of been a tough and very eye opening  period of time in my life.  I guess, because I lived in a very sheltered and functional family and I naturally possessed a very black and white way of seeing the world, I believed if something was "right" or "wrong" then that's how people would view and react to those things.  Ummmmmm, that's not always how it is. :) DUH!

Through this epiphany, I'm reshaping my ideas about being engaged in the lives of others and my willingness to jump into social situations.  Please hear me... I'm not closing down to those things and I'm not bitter...  I just feel smarter and more prepared for day-to-day life.  And to take it a little further, I'm that much more aware of my own ability to mess up and to become someone I don't really want to be, if I don't constantly stay on top of my own thoughts and behaviors. 

It's strange what having your eyes wide open can do to offer freedom to your life and encourage you to become a more authentic version of yourself.  I have always tried to fit into a mold of black and white, right and wrong, this is how I should look, think and feel.  I really didn't know who I was and hadn't really even given myself the option of being anything unexpected.   I finally accepted the idea that it was very possible and maybe even probable that I would not be able to avoid disappointing the people in my life at some point. I started to think that maybe I should at least be able to respect myself by becoming who I was really created to be.  As a matter of fact, who I really am and the grown up, think on my own girl is still revealing herself.  While I question some things, other parts are easy to answer.  For example, I'm still totally convinced of the love, faithfulness and sovereignty of God and still want nothing more than to do it right.  However, I've begun to realize that pleasing Him is so much more about seeking His heart for each situation than it is about following a list of rules.  That to me, is liberating.  I refuse to do it according to any one else's version of the truth.  I want to live by conviction of truth and that doesn't come from other people's  interpretation of what God has for me.  I have to seek Him and find that for myself for it to be real.  Then, the doing is easy because I give myself no other options. I don't even know what other words to say to communicate how I feel about it, but it has been a life altering realization.  Secondly, when I'm able to offer myself the freedom of not being perfect, I'm able to much more easily extend that same freedom to those around me.  It changes me from one of those people who is shaken by every mis-step of others.  Instead, I can accept disappointment from others as part of life yet still view them for all the good they offer instead of for the mistakes they make.  Does any of this make sense?  (At least it does in my own head :) )

This has kind of gotten a lot deeper than I meant for it to.  Anyway, my point is, I'm seeking and Jeremiah 29:13 says, "If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me."...