The Courage to be Me
Why do I do the things I do?
Why can’t I be content and go with the flow and be happy with the status quo like everyone else seems to be?
Who am I really?
Have you ever felt this way or asked yourself these questions?
I was not made for a cookie cutter existence and neither were you.
Nurturing our true selves – the way we were created with our God-given gifts and talents, should not be an out-of-reach luxury, stored in the back of our minds that we might get to someday.
Enter society’s “mirror” – social media. If you are like me, there are days you hate it and days you love it. At any given moment, we revel in beautiful stories of hope and kindness, adorable baby photos, or comical memes, but we also see how wonderful everyone else’s lives seem to be and how we fall short; what we should look like, eat, wear, weigh, vacations, etc. The list goes on.
Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash
For years, I’ve tried to do things I thought I was supposed to do, even though my gut was warning me otherwise. Yes, I acknowledge part of life is doing things you don’t necessarily want to do, right? But because the Lord had not dropped Susan’s Life 101 in my lap, I was looking for guidance in the wrong places. Instead of looking vertically to the Lord and being patient, seeking His plans and purpose for my life, I was rushing ahead looking horizontally to see what everyone else was doing.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, Eph. 2: 4-6 (ESV)
But I’m not like everyone else and neither are you – nor should we be. As human beings, we all have similarities, but God made each of us unique and beautiful in our own way. We are created by The Master Creator which makes each of us a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. I have always admired people who “marched to the beat of their own drum” and seemed anchored, unaffected by the latest current of fad or trend. They seem perfectly content in their own skin and at peace with who they are in the world.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Eph. 2:10 (ESV)
We all want to be loved and accepted for who we are (Pr. 19:22). But do I have the courage to be me? Do you have the courage to be you? To chance being regarded as weird, cooky, or eccentric and not following suite with the masses on the latest social media trend whose only message is “you’re not enough”?
Satan knows who we are and wants to destroy us, along with God and anything belonging to Him (John 10:10). He knows who God is, we are His creation, and when we embrace who we are in Jesus Christ, we will be a light to a dark world, do great things for the Kingdom of God and thwart his purposes.
The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows]. John 10:10 AMP
Please join me friend. Join me in insisting on glorifying God with who He made you to be. It is okay the world doesn’t love us. Jesus said they wouldn’t (John 15:19). But just as gazing at a masterpiece imparts awe and wonder in the observer, so we too reflect the beauty and wonder of our Heavenly Father when we live as the unique, beautiful, and one-of-a-kind person He created us to be.
