seeing dimly

"For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was." James 1:23-24

This morning I was thinking about something my father said to me about my gifts & personality last week. He said I was a generalist. I want to have knowledge and experience in many areas but not be an expert in any particular area. For those of you who know me, that is a bit of a "duh" statement, though I do not know that I have actually thought of myself in those terms before. As I was thinking about this new realization about myself, it just struck me that I have invested hours upon hours of my time taking personality tests, learning style inventories, career aptitude tests, personal gifting inventories, presidential physical fitness tests (thank you elementary school... i never made it up that stupid rope. i still couldn't make it up that stupid rope. if i was being chased by a lion and my life depended on climbing a rope with a single knot at the bottom, i would be cat food. i can do a couple pull ups now though... anyway...), cartoon character comparison tests, celebrity look-a-like photo matches, and spiritual gift inventories.

At the same moment I am living this life 24 hours a day, very much being myself, I am constantly being reintroduced to this person that is me. It feels ridiculous to know I do not know me. I do not know what I am fully capable of - beautiful or horrific. I do not know who I will be tomorrow, and I am still trying to figure out who I was yesterday.

I know I am not the only one trying to figure out who this person stuck in my skin is. Just look around while you are checking out at the grocery store, and you can find a plethora (of pinatas) of quizzes to take to tell you all kinds of stuff: your likelihood to be famous, whether or not your children will be born bald, how "good you are in the sack" (as they ask you if you want paper or plastic), and if today's love relationship might be your "forever love". We want to know who we are and who we can be.

Some easy answers come like fortune cookie blessings, and we smile as we think, "Well, I am doing okay. I guess."

But our question is not truly answered. If we are lucky, we are able to rub away an inch or two of the smudge on the mirror, and we see a piece of ourselves we did not know was there.

"Oh... that's my elbow. I heard others talk about them... but wow, I bet that will be handy if I learn how to use that. It's all weirdly bendy and stuff... Cool."

Sometimes, it is in the moments of desperation, tragedy, pain, pleasure, euphoria - the crucible of extremes - we see something we did not know we were capable of. And then we step away, and have to decide whether or not we accept what we just saw in ourselves. Can I still like and even love me if that is part of who I am or can be? I know many who saw something in themselves that they were not ready to accept in one of those crucible moments - And deciding not to accept what they saw, began to either destroy themselves or the relationship that they were in that exposed this new facet that they did not know could be there.

Fully knowing who you are and who you can be is a weight beyond what most, if any of us, can bear. So we get glimpses of potential and hindsight to piece together a mosaic of who we are. We string together memories, the words and actions of others (both truth & lies), our shimmering successes, our failures, a few bits of knowledge - all colored by our deepest passions and fears - to quilt together some kind of identity we can hold. Look around... some wrap themselves in dark colors, the black numbness and denial of their value like a shroud covering their beauty. Others liberally piece together cutting edge fashion complete with trendy arm candy to outwardly extol their value.

Little boys love to test their strength and manliness against men they admire. Watch them eagerly wrestle with their father, uncle, and friends. They want to know if they are strong enough to be a man. Men love to test their strength and manliness against what they fear. Having not found peace with their strength as boys, they wrestle to overcome noble and selfish pursuits to prove to themselves that they are strong enough to be a man.

All of us, all of us, wondering who is this in my skin and can I love them?

As we learn who we are we are responsible to handle this new knowledge correctly. Though I do not know that anyone ever teaches you how to do that. If you accept that you were created by God who knew you before you did, and chose to love you before you knew what love was - then it is in His words alone that you can find peace.

"For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well." Psalm 139:13-14

"Now we see a blurred image in a mirror. Then we will see very clearly. Now my knowledge is incomplete. Then I will have complete knowledge as God has complete knowledge of me." 1 Corinthians 13:12

Therefore, we take all of this, memories, hopes, truth, and lies, prayerfully before God. We choose to trust that what we do not know yet, He knows. As we see glimpses of ourselves in the now, we trust the stability of His eternal perspective. It was resolute before we were turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. When we struggle to accept what we have discovered about ourselves, we ask Him to share a bit of His graceful gaze. When we want to inflate our ego like pufferfish, we ask Him again to help us see ourselves rightly. It is neither by our successes or our failings, our beauty marks or stretch marks, our hopes or fears - that we are ultimately defined.

The one stable beat, the pulse of an unshaken identity, is simply, "I am one who is created to be loved and reflect that love as I grow in my knowledge of it." If we can accept this and submit our grand defenses, self-righteous justifications, and elaborate excuses to this unpolluted stream - we can find peace in our own skin.