Who are you?
That sounds like an odd question but it’s the best question you could ever ask yourself. If you don’t know who you are, then your life is really like a pinball, jumping from place-to-place and merely reacting to life.
I’ve asked that question to myself many times in the last two years as I’ve fought cancer. Mostly, I’ve asked it to myself so that I don’t waste time and get distracted. If you know who you are then you know what you do and where you are going.
For example, I’ve changed the way I eat but it’s not a diet. A diet starts and stops, which is why people fail at it so often. After it stops, they go back to their previous behavior.
The better way to approach it is to say, “I am a person that doesn’t eat fast food.” Or “I’m a person that doesn’t eat snacks from vending machines or soft drinks.”
When you know who you are, that defines what you do. This keeps you on track. Here are some other examples:
- I’m a Christian so I read the Bible. I pray. (That’s what Christians do!)
- I’m a dedicated husband so I love my wife and look after her needs.
- I’m a person that exercises to take care of my body.
- I make it a point not to worry and instead be confident that God will take care of me. (This is the hard when you are a cancer survivor and you’ve been in and out of remission in a year’s time!)
- I want to take care of my body so I eat good food and stay away from eating junk food.
Good point. I think one of the toughest battles in life is to discover who you are, as God sees you. The world labels and categorizes and confines. I think true freedom comes when we realize who God sees us as, when we hear God say, “This is who you are.” Our identity must come from Christ, from who we are IN Christ, not OUTSIDE of Christ.
And really, who we are in Christ is who we really are. It’s not just some cheezy cliché. I’ve been fighting to just be me for years! And I still haven’t reached it. I’m still hemmed in by my own fears and insecurities, living timid, not wanting to offend anyone. I want to believe what God says about me, and how extravagantly He loves me, and live from that place of confidence, that place of truth. I think then, and only then, will we truly live. Then I’ll be fully alive, in Christ.