Learning About Myself

It's funny how many posts I've written between this one and my last one that I could never bring myself to hit the publish button on.  I'm not completely for sure why unless its that in the end they seemed to just be the jumble of thoughts in my head that only made sense to me.  

The last few weeks have been hard to describe for me.  There's been a lot of internal wrestling as I've sorted through various things I've been discovering about myself.  I mentioned in one of my last posts about a program I had just started to try called Dressing Your Truth.  I loved the idea behind this program that a blogger I follow shared.  The more I looked into it the more I liked the idea that I could dress in a way that instantly began to inform others who I am.  The idea that certain colors, textures, shapes all can compliment the way God created me and the gifts he's given me was definitely something that appealed to me.  

I think what I did not expect going into this is that it would open the door on some things from the past I'd pushed way back into the recesses of my memory.  As I began the process of embracing who I was created to be in a more visible way I discovered that there were things over the years I have loved that I've not allowed myself to experience.  I shut them off and pushed them to the side for years because I felt it made me look weak or less than others.

The creator of Dressing Your Truth refers to four energy types.  I struggled with that a little at first, but then I realized that like so many words in our vocabulary, the word energy has various meanings.  In this application the definition of forcefulness of expression seems to fit the best.  So as I explored the types of energy or expression that she outlined from her years of study I discovered (at first much to my chagrin) that I fit into the Type 2 Energy or Expression.  What this means for me is that I express myself in more subtle and softer ways.  I'm not the life of the party, but I won't be hiding in the corner from everyone either.  I'll find myself a small group that I can feel connected and comfortable around and those are my people for the night.  

It's crazy because I've spent so much of my life thinking that I needed to be more extroverted and that I needed to be all things to all people when all along I was created with the purpose of connecting in smaller more detailed ways.  It's interesting for me because some of the difficult moments that have come out of the last few years start to be explained as I looked into my type of expression more.  I realized that one of my strengths becomes seeing and recognizing unhealth in situations in the earliest stages.  The fact that I'm sensitive when used in the right way can help uncover the little things that will keep something from moving forward in a healthy way that allows for growth.  I start to see the reasons that I instinctively knew over the years it was time to remove myself from a particular situation.  It was part of a gift I've been given as opposed to a crazy emotional roller coaster I was on.  

As a little bookworm over the years I've read The Five Love Languages, I've taken Personality tests, DISC profiles and anytime someone posts a test on Facebook I usually end up taking it always wanting to learn more about myself.  I've often struggled if I didn't get the results I viewed as more positive expressions, but now I'm beginning to see the strength in the answers I've gotten over the years.  I've started to explore ways that I can live out of my strengths as opposed to merely wanting the energy/expression that someone else has.  It's so funny how they all begin to come together and form a picture titled TONYA when I start to look through the lens of I was created with a unique set of gifts and talents and God gave me all the tools I need to be the best version of me from day 1.  

All of this causes me to reflect on my word for the year Recklessly Abandoned.  I start to realize that it takes form in this instance in that I can start to let go of everything that people have tried to tell me about myself and embrace the part of me that I've been afraid to acknowledge existed.

There is a line in the song Live Like That by Sidewalk Prophets 

Recklessly Abandoned never holding back.

To live in who you were created to be means letting go of what others have said about you and living in the truth of who God made you to be.  It means embracing it in every way possible and for me that next step has been to begin dressing true to who I am.  

Accepting Brokenness

My journey to find rest is now a journey toward wholeness.  A putting back together that includes broken pieces.

The journey of rest is leading me to recover all of my soul.  This peace makes no detours around reality.

~Finding Spiritual Whitespace

A couple of years ago I was presented with the idea of genuineness, authentic relationships and being accepted even in my brokenness.  It sounded wonderful.  I loved the idea of being accepted for who I was without being judged.  I loved the idea so much I even started to incorporate it into my vocabulary.

I really bought into the idea that this was the way to do church, ministry and relationships.  We needed to be willing to accept one another in our brokenness and to just be real.  Open and honest.  That was my new motto.

And then something happened.  I came face to face with my own brokenness.  In sharing that brokenness, my ideals of genuineness was challenged to say the least over an extended period of time and eventually the attempts to remain open and authentic became a little too much to handle so I retreated to the protection of my shell much like a little turtle.  And there I began to find the answers I was looking for so desperately.

One of the most important parts to having my brokenness accepted is learning to accept it myself.  So often as humans it can be easier to give verbal assent to something while not truly accepting it as reality.  When I'm busy filling my life as full as I can and I stay busy doing more and more I'm in reality hiding my brokenness behind the work I'm doing.  

The visual that comes to mind is that if you fill a pitcher with numerous cracks as full as you can get it with water and then proceed to dump it upside down releasing all of the water at once you never truly realize the magnitude of the broken nature of the pitcher.  On the other hand if you fill the pitcher full and allow it to rest on a table.  Still, not moving.  That is how you will discover the broken nature of the pitcher.  Over time with rest the pitcher will let water seep out of the broken areas that no longer have the capacity to hold it back.

That is how I discovered my true brokenness.  When God brought me to a place where rest was all I could do.  When I had to stop turning the pitcher that was myself upside down and emptying myself all at once then God could introduce me to the parts of me that needed healing and wholeness.  

Actually, I'm still there.  I'm still in the middle of journeying through my brokenness with God.  It's a journey that explores all of my soul.  Not just the places I'm comfortable with exploring.  Sometimes I don't like it so much.  It very often feels like physical therapy of my soul that stretches soul muscles I didn't know I had.  And I usually hurt a lot afterwards!  But I'm also learning that accepting brokenness doesn't mean just accepting the brokenness of others.  It means accepting my own brokenness and letting God journey with me through it to (as Bonnie Gray so eloquently puts it in Finding Spiritual Whitespace) recover my soul.  

I'm discovering that this part of the journey is much more difficult than merely accepting someone else in their broken place.  It means that I have to be real with myself in a way that so often I'd rather breeze past.  It means letting God into places that I've wanted to ignore myself, but am finding that in my quest for authenticity God is requiring deep soul searching so that He can step into my brokenness with healing and truth about how He sees me.