From one morning earlier this week:
The full moon, brilliantly speaking from its place just moments before, waved goodbye as it sunk silently into the cool of the lake's rising mist.
It was as if it was signaling me about something....
I inadvertently discovered this week that I've fallen - fallen into an identity crisis. Perhaps, crisis is a bit over-stated (but, perhaps not!). I realized that I have fallen into the common trap of relying too heavily on external perceptions to define my identity. There seems to be a very incremental nature to such falls, even when they're rooted in specific events or interactions. One little indicator after another, borrowed and stowed away without overt knowledge, creep up on you - often adding up without realizing it. Even my wife had to come right out and ask me. Like one of the prior generations one-liners, "I've fallen and I can't get up!", I had landed in a funk and didn't know why. Some of it, I'm sure, was related to a combination of encounters with other people. But, this question crawled out from under the pile, "why am I letting some of these things, that don't normally affect me, bother me so much right now?
And that lead me to acknowledging that I have once again (its happened before multiple times) slipped into the mode of using other people's perception of me dictate how I see myself. This was most obvious by the anger I felt towards them, again over how I thought they were perceiving me. My perceptions of their perceptions my not even have been true, but even if they were...I am still left with the fresh awareness of what I am using to define who I am, who I think I am.
Re-Discovery: I am not actually defined by what others think of me, nor even completely by who I think I am. I am defined by who God says I am. From there, all true identity freedoms spring forth. But, managing the dams of others' perceptions is a dicey enterprise - one that often ends up either in defeat or hatred.
I need to return again and again to who God says I am and let that define my self-view.
Obviously, all of the external things, like the perceptions of others, are 'in the mix' when it comes to self-awareness (or we likely end up living in some strange, contorted form of denial). Nonetheless, we need to return to the true definer of things - to the One who created us, in the first place, for our sense of real identity.
I needed this to recognize anew one of the basic realities of my so human existence. The voice of the moon invited me to do it...to stand up and be my true self again.
