When you lose a significant other, it's normal to feel a loss of identity. Who are you without that person that everyday revolved around, that you shared the most intimate parts of yourself and your life with?
This is a question I've been asking myself for awhile. Who am I?
Growing up, I was the only child my parents both relied on in different ways. I was my mom's best friend, my dad's protector (I know, that should have been the other way around but it wasn't.)
After they died, I met and started dating Joey. When he left me in March, another huge identity crisis emerged, one that I never fully answered in the first place.
I tried for months to rebuild my life, to heal... and was making progress. Then, he returned in October wanting to reconcile. I thought all my prayers had been answered. I thought it was a miracle.
But no. (Well, we will see. Miracles happen in so many mysterious ways.)
He left again right before Christmas, leaving me feeling more rejected, more abandoned and more deeply alone than the first go round.
Tonight, as I'm starting to see something emerging from the ashes, I ask that question again.
Who am I?
I'm the BRAVE one.
I'm the one that can reinvent myself... over... and over... and over... and over again.
I'm the one that can rise up from the ashes and make something beautiful out of it. And if not beautiful, well, at least LUMINOUS.
For years I would pray to be luminous, radiant, filled with light... little did I understand that meant I would suffer. We have to be purified in order for the light to shine through us. We're a lot like diamonds being polished and honed. The more suffering, the more we sparkle (when we suffer correctly.) That is to say, when we suffer with Christ and for Christ.
I'm the one that can start out with nothing and make it look like something.
I'm the one that is INEXHAUSTIBLE.
I'm the one that never loses hope.
I'm the one who is an alchemist of faith. I can take one thing and turn it into something else entirely.
I'm the one that believes... in magic... and miracles... and ANGELS.
I'm the one that talks to birds and they let me pick them up and hold them. (Christmas miracle story for another blog.)
I'm the one you don't want to underestimate.
I'm the one that can not be disintegrated by rejection.
I've been abandoned, forgotten, betrayed... and somehow, I find the right order within myself to pray for that person the next day. I recover.
Don't believe in God?
Look into my eyes and you will see HIM.
Because I can do none of this on my own accord. But I can do all things in CHRIST who strengthens me.
I'm a logical, mystical person and there's no other explanation. It's got to be God.
Who am I?
I'm The Brave One.
