Who am I?
(This post was originally written as part of the blog for my new site, but as the site has not launched yet and I feel this message is powerful and needs sharing... i've opted to cross post it here)
With the exception of my short stint in Yellowstone National Park, I have always lived in big city America. I grew up in Chicago living there till I was 22, then I spend 6 years Boston, and now just short of 2 years in Austin, TX. I love cities. I love the rush and the bustle. I wandering buses and subways, photographing all the random moments as practically noone even notices you as they go about their busy city day.
Life in big city America shows you that you are all the same. You are all just tiny ants pouring into and out of large subway cars and buses and highways. You are all just worker bees in and out of elevators in highrises full of cubicles.
Consequently, I believe that life in big city America leaves your heart not just searching but parched for the water of uniqueness. Our needs to be unique, to be separate, to be… more than just one of the many… these needs are so deep and so real. That it leaves so many of us sitting alone in our apartments by ourselves, seeing shrinks, being totally stressed out, because we are trying to find the answer to “who am I?”.
The question of “who am I”… its huge, and its ellusive. And it’s so easy and tempting to get wrapped up in.
I will admit just recently I started to get sucked back into this. I’m in the process of launching a new personal/professional website. And that whole process asks the question of “who am I?” and “who do I want to show the world I am” and it is so easy to let that question for that site grow into the deep soul question of who I am that just paralyzes forward motion in life.
Why does it paralyze?
Because it is the wrong question
Yes, you heard me right. It is the wrong question.
Think about that for a minute. Take a minute and wrap your little urban i-have-to-prove-my-worth-and-my-uniqueness brain around the fact that I’m about to pull the rug right out from under you. (Mostly because it just recently got pulled back out from under me again… and I don’t think it is a rug that ANY of us need in our homes)
We were not put onto this earth in order to figure out who we are.
The bible does not ask us who we are, it tells us who we are. Why would our purpose here be to figure out something that we are already told in plain english?
It clearly spells out our identities as children of the King, as redeemed sinners, as free worshippers of the Most High.
No our job is not to figure out something we have already been told.
Our job is to, knowing what we have been told… and operating with that as truth, to go and to examine and figure out and to explore who HE is, and how HIS love affects each of us, and to figure out how we can share that love even in some tiny way (though nothing about His love is tiny) with everyone we run into.
So…. it’s not “who am i” that should keep us up at night….
it’s “how can I show them who You are?” that we should focus on.
Man… i need to work in this area so much. My head put together these words last night as my heart struggles to truly know them because “who i am” is such an easy place to slide back into for the type-a overachiever that I am.
I think this week I’m going to make a point to pray through “how can I show them who You are?” each morning, during each commute, and each evening. That will be my first step in this. What will be yours?
