I’m not who I thought I was

Yesterday I tweeted “I’m not who I thought I was.” I wasn’t trying to be terribly cryptic, just analytical which is difficult for a simple mind like myself. 

While I was proud of myself for ‘digging deep’, I realized my tweet was producing a number of “hey, are you doing all right?” and “are you **sure** your okay?” responses and texts. 

The truth is no I’m not okay, but that’s life.

I won’t dink around with the sordid details but my issues can be summed up in four ways:

1. Marriage, parenting and daughter-hood

2. Money, sex and power

3. External pressure

4. Facing inner demons

In short, I’m living out the human condition in all its heartbreaking nuances.

At some point, we all take the role of son, daughter, wife, husband or parent and in that role find ourselves utterly disgusted by these people we have come to love and sometimes wish we hadn’t.

At some point we all figure out how we are going to handle what my supervisor calls “the three great temptations of life,” money, sex and power.  Use them for good, they bring tremendous blessing, use them for evil and they can and will ruin yours and the lives of everyone around you.

At some point, we all face pressure from work, or on the other hand, pressure from lack of work and poverty.

And at some point, we all should face our inner demons.  I don’t like acknowledging that I thought I was a better person than it turns out that I am, and even more than that, I hate facing the evil and ugly vileness of my heart.  It’s beyond painful and I can see why anyone would avoid this type of introspection.

If I wasn’t a Christian I wouldn’t be doing it.  One of the most basic premises of Christianity is that God loves us so completely and tremendously that there isn’t anything we can do to make him love us any less (or any more). In short, God encourages us to know and acknowledge our capacity for evil because it doesn’t change anything of our value and furthermore only gives us a greater opportunity for deeper intimacy knowing that we are deeply loved by God, as is.

It’s not navel-gazing, it’s facing reality.

But even then, it hurts like hell and I would rather just run away then keep facing these realities, but I’m choosing not to.  So.  No, I’m not “okay” per se, but that’s life.  I don’t  expect to live it any less painfully then the next person and neither should you.