Tattoos and torn jeans

It's time for a little soul searching.....


Who am I.

I mean really. When God Himself picked me up out of that pit, wiped the ashes off my face and looked deep into my eyes what did He see, or better yet who did He see. With the childhood I had, leading into the adolescence I had there was always this lingering problem of not knowing who I was. So I would do the next best thing and conform to whomever I was around. I would start dressing like they dressed, liking the music, food and even the boys they liked. It was easier to conform to who they were than to walk around in this numbness of not knowing who I was. This started at a very early age.... Like I can remember these feelings as early as like 6 or 7. This was what I did all through elementary and junior high school. When I got into highschool I was thrust into a world of 300 other kids who didn't know who they were and were all trying to do the same thing. I very quickly became someone I didn't want to be but in my mind it was better than having no identity at all. This identity would be carried with me everywhere I went. It was branded on me by everyone, my friends, my teachers, my youth group leaders, even my own parents. It was something that it took me until this year this break free from. It wasn't an identity I asked asked for but it was better than walking around numb and not knowing who I am. I would continue this cycle of numbness then conformity, numbness then conformity and so and so forth. All the while the lies inside my head were just getting louder. I didn't know I had an enemy, a vicious enemy that prowls around like a roaring lion waiting to devour you. But he was there and he was loud. I would hear things like "You will NEVER be good enough, "You will always be like this, "You have to be this way or no one will love you, "This is just who you are, accept it" When I started to do drugs the lies started to go like this. "You need this drug, "You will never get by without it, "This is part of your image now, accept it, and the final lie I believed, Toughness is what will make you, don't ever let it go" I came to a point where I accepted toughness as my fate, as my identity, as my cover for every scar on my wounded heart. I remember one day after an AA meeting sitting with some of my friends eating breakfast. There I was with my bleach blond hair, my heavy eye makeup, all my tattoos, my camel smokes in front of me with my zippo lighter, mouth as tight as could be, smoking my cigarette when one of the ladies looks at me as says "Do you always try and act so tough" I was floored. Angry at first that she would dare question my act, then embarrassed that it was so flawed. I have carried that toughness with me for a long time. It made me and it eventually broke me. It's still breaking me. I have carved this image, this idol for myself that I have to be this person, this someone that is cool, tough, and unbreakable. The problem is I am none of those things. While I love to think I am cool, those around me will tell you that I am pretty much a dork. And truth be told I am not tough and don't want to be tough anymore. God see's past my toughness and really so does every one else. I am the queen of meltdowns and when I have one there is no toughness there. God wants my heart to be soft, mold-able to Him and pure above all else. And the unbreakable part of that image well that was broken two and a half years ago when I reached my hands up to the sky out of pure desperation and said "Lord break me" And He was true to His word and He started the longest most painful process that I have ever been through. Part of that process was the breaking of the idol of my image. The toughness, the unbreakable spirit that I carried. The girl who thought that tattoos and torn jeans were who she was and that she needed to be defined by that. It's not me, it never was. The only problem is all the abuse I went through and the lies and I listened to for so long have caused me to still suffer from some identity chaos. I am on a little more solid ground now. I at least know these days what kind of food I like, music I like and have grown up enough to realize that differences in friends are a good thing. But there are some deeper things, some soul things that I have no idea about. Things I need my Father in heaven to speak so sweetly to me. And I believe He will. This I believe is the next part in my healing journey. To really seek Him in my identity, because my identity is in Christ.
"For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sister"
Romans 8:29
That is the only kind of conforming I want these days.......