To Be Yourself…
Photo by Elina Sazonova
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I never felt like I quite fit into this world. As a highly sensitive person (HSP) and a Myers-Briggs INFP, I felt pretty foreign all my life in comparison to others. I am an empath and could probably fall somewhere under the category of some type of “attention-defecit”. Certainly not the hyper kind, since I’ve been tired my whole life, but definitely the dreamy and absentminded kind. I was homeschooled from middle school on and I had a weird adolescence where I spent most of my days alone for many years due to both my parents working. We lived in a farmhouse on an beautiful old estate because my Dad was an estate manager for a very wealthy family so we had free range of the estate which included their large acreage of woods where I would walk. While most other kids were in a high school classroom, I was walking in the woods or at home dreaming. I was “unschooled” before it was cool because my education was mostly interest and child-led.
If the rest of the world was a circle, I felt like I was on the outside of it. I have fought and wrestled with my design. Not understanding my place in the world. Feeling so different and really struggling to connect with “normal” people. I tried different personalities on- trying to be more extroverted or more of what I felt society deemed “acceptable”. Only to find myself exhausted and empty.
The truth is, I still don’t fully understand how Jesus wants to use me. I still struggle to this day to understand why I am here and really how to serve in this life in a way that correlates with my God-given design and personality. But, what I have learned is that God intricately designs us on purpose and uses us in very specific ways. The ways in which he uses you may be very different from the way that he does me. And I know I would drown in certain atmospheres where others thrive. But I believe what He needs us to do is to embrace the way we are made. It makes me sad that I have spent so much time trying to change myself thinking I needed to be different to make any kind of impact on the world. But, we can only reflect the beauty of God when we are who He made us to be.
Embrace who you are, in all your quirks. Every good character has them, and it’s part of what draws us into a good book when we can connect with the intimate details of someone’s life. Mine? I’m basically always cold…and bruised. I have multiple scars on my face from chicken pox as a child. I have social anxiety..like..to the point of sweating. I am a hopeless romantic, an idealist and I’m ambidextrous. I eat dark chocolate everyday and I easily become agitated by the sound bananas make when people chew them. I have a temper and I am absent-minded and distracted (as we already established). I’m always tired and I’m constantly singing. I’ve never been a scholar but I cry for and feel other people’s pain as if it were my own. I swear a lot in my head. Oh, and I’m also a bad driver. Jesus knows all this about me, and He loves all the little details that make me unique. (Except maybe for the swearing part- I’m working on it…) Because He made us. We are his design. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” He planned who we would be, and what we would do, and crafted a personality to be able to carry out the specific purpose only we could accomplish.
God made you the way you needed to be to fulfill His purposes. Who you are is enough to fulfill His will for your life. You do not have to live someone else’s life. We need to comprehend that we have great freedom in the Lord to use our own brains, values, gifts and personalities to live into His will for our lives.
In honesty, I think I may always feel out of place here. But as C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
I was made for heaven. And so were you. But, while were here, lets have the courage to be ourselves so that we can fulfill God’s plan for us.
