We’ve all heard the phrase, and, perhaps some have even used it, “I need to find myself.” I used to laugh at such a notion. Look in a mirror, I’d think to myself. It’s easy to get lost when you’re driving somewhere and you don’t have a map. It’s easy to forget where you placed your keys. Your lucky t-shirt that you just know you left sitting on the bed last night that’s not there anymore, yeah, it’s easy to lose that too. But yourself? How in the world do you find yourself, which can only imply that you lost yourself? If there is one thing in this world you can’t escape… it’s you!
It sounds like a mid-life crisis thing. Like an excuse to go and buy a sports car. I suppose that’s not all bad. The weather is getting nicer. Who wouldn’t want a sports car? If it isn’t a sports car, it’s an excuse to have an affair, quit your job and join the circus, or bust out the wardrobe of your youth and bring back those days when you knew who you were, and where you were.
I lost myself. I realized it this week. The very thing that I used to laugh at others for revealing, I am now revealing to you. I guess before you can fully understand it, you have to actually experience it. So here I am, experiencing it! I will say this much. I have no intentions of joining the circus. It is also nowhere in my plans to conduct an affair. If I’m being honest though, I won’t yet make any promises about the sports car!
I spent some time thinking about all of this, this week. What I determined is that there are 3 versions of me. There is the version of me that existed before I got married. Then there is the version of me that existed while I was married. Finally, there is the version of me that exists in the present… after divorce.
All 3 of these versions of myself have there good and bad points. Life changes, and people change along with it. We grow. We mature. We learn. Life is a series of events from which we can educate ourselves. It only makes sense that after living through what I’ve lived through, I’d be different.
In many ways, I’m different in good ways. For that I’m grateful. To me, anyway, it means that I’ve done the best I can to learn from my experiences and adapt those lessons into becoming a better version of myself. I know I’ve become softer. Much more tender. I’ve developed patience the likes of which I never possessed, yet, desperately needed. I understand compassion in a practical way now. Such is a lesson we could all stand to learn! I have come to appreciate the fact that God gave me two ears, yet, a single mouth. I’ve learned both how to listen and hear while being slow to speak. Perhaps, most important of all lessons learned, was humility. In the past 2 years, I’ve most definitely been humbled!
I live a very safe life. I have settled in, in many ways, and become content with where I am – post divorce. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Would I love to have my house back? Of course. Do I wish I had someone to come home to each day? Certainly! In the absence of these things though, I’ve learned to be happy with where I am. The danger with that is that when you become content, your expectations, whether you know it or not, are lessened. ”Maybe this is as good as it gets.” What I wouldn’t give to banish that line from my brain!
By living my life on autopilot, that is to say, by settling in personally and professionally, where I can do well, I fooled myself into thinking I was happy, and in turn, accepted less than I was worth. I lost myself in the adequate, when I should’ve been stretching myself into the abundant.
I used to be confident. I used to be a leader. I used to be a force in my personal and professional life, regardless of what I was doing. If I didn’t excel, I didn’t succeed. Divorce changed me though. Even though I’ve been on my own for quite some time now, I didn’t realize it until this week. I say this, not as an excuse. It’s easy to blame divorce, or any trial for that matter, on our current circumstances. ”You’ve been through a lot, it’s OK to be down.” ”After all you’ve experienced, it’s no wonder you’re not excelling.” I don’t want to hear that junk. That is a weak man’s way out. I may not currently be the man I was, but I don’t want to be weak!
I wouldn’t trade a single lesson I’ve learned in my life over the past couple of years for anything. Each one of them was important in my development as a man. Each quality will be important in my life ahead, be it as a single man, as a husband, or as a father. However, I do want to get back some of that fire I had in my past.
God was using me a couple of years ago and I was excited to be used. Life beat on me for a while though. There is nothing wrong with getting knocked down, this I’ve come to understand. I used to think it an embarrassment, a sign of weakness. I think it was in allowing myself to believe those things that I slowly watched my confidence fade away. Nobody aspires to fail. So when you feel as though you have, it’s easy to lose heart. What I have since come to realize is that you only fail when you quit. As Edison said, “I have not failed 1000 times. I have successfully discovered 1000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”
I quit trying for a while I think. Professionally and personally, I played it safe. This provided me with marginal success which allowed me to fool myself into thinking I was doing OK. I don’t want to be OK. God promised us more than OK. What I need to do is re-connect with that guy from a couple of years ago who lived on the edge and wasn’t afraid to take risks. That guy was living an abundant life!
I used to say, better to be thought a fool than a coward. Somewhere along the line I lost touch with that. As soon as you become afraid to be thought a fool, you cease to live abundantly. It is in that moment that adequacy sets in.
It’s OK to lose yourself for a while. It happened to me, which I can only assume means, it happens to the best of us! ;-) It’s how hard you work at finding yourself again, and the lessons you learn along the way that make all the difference!
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