There is a trap into which I have frequently fallen that looks something like this: I have friends and family who have been blessed in ways which I could wish for myself or perhaps they do things in ways that I wish I could emulate and so I am tempted to try to become them. I mean this in very small but significant ways. Perhaps I know someone who is very cultured and I wish to be more so myself so I will try to read books which they think are important or perhaps I will pick up a mannerism of theirs. And we all do this of course. There is a kind of rank discontent buried deep inside each of us that says "I need to be other than I am". And so we look for examples to emulate. We find those people who have the things we want or who are what we wish we could be.
I believe that this desire has a legitimate source. That is I believe that all humans are broken and hurting, as we have been born, and that discontent is ultimately founded in a longing for God and to be made into the image of Christ. But, I know for myself anyway, I settle for much smaller and easier targets and I focus on all the wrong things. I even sometimes find myself thinking "If I only had this one thing my life would be so much easier and more joyous". Perhaps not those words but definitely that sentiment. And the thing is I know it's false.
The way I see it, one of the most beautiful aspects of Christianity is that God does not make us drones. Over and over I have seen both in scripture and in life how God uses who we are specifically. We all have a unique personality with instinctive likes and dislikes, passions and aversions, talents and struggles. We are all truly unique snowflakes in the particulars of who we are. And yet somehow we are all also very similar as humans in our needs, our problems, our failings, our pain and our joys. We are like threads in a tapestry to use a common literary metaphor. There are many colors and patterns of weaving for individual threads and yet all the threads share a nature (they are threads) and a purpose (while one thread is part of the sky and another is part of an eye they all create one work).
So, when I look at a friend or family member and try live as they do I am missing the point. I am exactly as I am because I have been created that way for a purpose. A purpose which no one but me can fulfill. And furthermore, as a Christian I believe that the creator of the universe loves me AS I AM. This is not to downplay the role and need for sanctification and becoming more Christ like. But even with all of my failings, my sin, and my ugliness (in every sense of the word) God does not say he loves some future version of me. How everything works together I may never know but when I look at my social awkwardness, my tendency to over share, my aversion of most sports, my love of adventure and the fantastical, my nerdiness and many other things some of which I love and some of which I really wish were different I can think "I am exactly who I am meant to be. I will not always be this way because life is change but here in this moment in this place I am exactly what God wants me to be for his purpose."
After all that I am not really sure what my point was meant to be. Except that you should live your life as yourself and not as some cheap knockoff of someone else who is smarter or stronger or prettier or in some other way superlative. After all you only live once.
Until next time God bless.
