Becoming Who You Were Created To Be

I have a confession to make.  I was so glad to count down the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.  I never want to "ring in" the New Year by doing the countdown and then shouting and cheering when it's over.  Usually, I'm fast asleep when it happens.  

But this year was different.  I did the countdown with gusto, encouraging everyone in the hotel bar, where I happened to be, to do the same. I may have frightened them, truth be told.  

Good riddance to 2024.  It was definitely not my favorite year for a lot of good reasons.  

But as I've been pondering all of my feelings about the end of a challenging year, I've also started to wonder what it takes to really and truly find a new way forward.  

I've got this little sign next to my bed that I have been staring at all morning, and it declares this inspirational sentiment:  "If it is to be, it is up to me."  Right this second, I am thinking, "Easier said than done, mate."

Parker J. Palmer speaks about a symbolic and mysterious image of a person he spent years trying to avoid in his masterful book, Let Your Life Speak.  

In Parker's recollection, this shadowy figure seemed to follow him at a distance, constantly trying to get his attention. Still, he stubbornly refused to turn around, no matter how the figure gestured and shouted.  

Parker relates how it took the "atomic bomb" of depression to finally get him to turn around and find out what the figure wanted.  He writes: 

The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merton calls "true self." This is not the ego self that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another from of self-distortion), not the intellectual self that wants to hover above the mess of life in clear but ungrounded ideas, not the ethical self that wants to live by some abstract moral code. It is the self-planted in us by the God who made us in God's own image-- the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.

I have to tell you that when I first read this passage over twenty years ago, it resonated with me and resonates with me.  I'm unsure if I have done a very good job of listening to the figure calling out to me, though.   

So many of us spend far too much of life running away from our best selves.  We think we can white-knuckle our way through the hard times by feeding our ego with distractions, self-medicating with food, drink, retail therapy, doom-scrolling through social media, and the like.  

We avoid turning around to face the figure calling out to us because we instinctively know that when we do, we will have to surrender our control, change some things, and do the hard work of living more fully.  

This is why we need to be reminded that while there may be hard work ahead if we are going to become the people God created us to be, it pales in comparison to the repercussions of running from it.  

I'm learning that try as I might, I can't control much of anything except my reactions to the challenges I face.  I can choose to live as my best self with God's help, surrendering the outcomes and my desire for mastery over my life, or I can decide to keep running.  

We all have that choice to make each and every day.  Our choices affect our direction, which determines our destination far more than our intentions.  

We might have the best intentions, but when we start in the wrong direction because of stubborn pride or fear of surrender, we end up in places we never wanted to be.  

So, as we step further into this new year, let us all take a moment to think deeply about the symbolic figure that may be calling out to us now.  Maybe it's time to stop running, struggling over control, or ignoring what may be the best for us.  

May we all know that God wants us to become who we have been created to be, live fully alive, and fulfill God's purposes for our lives.  

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us now and always. Amen.