Getting lost on the way to our life

Have you ever gotten lost on the way to your life? We all have … some more so than others. I’m not really sure when it begins, but we get sidetracked from being our authentic self by getting buried by artificial identities. We just get lost. It is so easy. First comes the question, “Are you Ted’s sister or Mary’s brother?” which is followed rather quickly by, “Are you Lowell’s son or John’s daughter?” We start getting lost on our way to our life so much so that we get confused as to just who we are. Labels, if that is what they are called, come quickly and have a tendency to stick … if we like it or not.

We’ve seen this played out in the national media. Tiger Woods lost his moral bearings and his core structure by believing that he was indestructible. Lindsay Lohan gained her fame and fortune, but lost the authentic individual. Both got caught up into believing what others where saying about them. They lost sight of what was really important and on their way to their life got lost.

Some people never recover from this emotional and mental, as well as spiritual misstep. They simply keeping going through the same process, but expect different results. Examples can be found wherever you wish to look – multiple divorces followed by multiple re-marriages, constantly changing jobs or the more “normal” sign of “lostness” by stating what your job is before people ask or who your parents are or who your children are long before anybody really cares.

It is all so confusing because as these layers are placed upon us we not only get buried by them, but we get lost on our way to our life. Mary Frances Chappell comes to mind. She very gently and loving refused to be labeled as, “The preacher’s wife” as in, “I have a name!” Also, she won’t let your children be labeled as the “preacher’s kids” … they to had a name and an identity apart from who their daddy was and what he did.

The sad result in this loss is that we fail at the most fundamental requirement of life … learning to love ourselves. It is sad because if we do not love ourselves then it becomes impossible to love anyone else. Oh, we say we love them, but the testimony to the reality that we really don’t love them as their authentic selves is that we place certain spoken or unspoken requirements upon them … as in “you should do …” or “why did you do …” or “you must … you gotta’ … you ought … you have to … why haven’t you … etc.” Just one layer of expectations and demands after another – layer upon layer – until at some point they get lost on their way to their life.

Oh, we’ve learned these little personality tricks from experts … they are called our parents. And, in turn, we pass it down to our children … “visiting the iniquity unto the third and fourth generations” (to quote from the Ten Commandments). We use these parental tricks in order to “control” the lives of the little people who have been entrusted into our care. Our intentions are good, but the process is misplaced. It is actually a miracle that we grow-up as well as we do, but the sad reality is that we have missed out on the authentic life that God intended us to have … we simply get lost on the way to our life.

A child comes into this world trusting everyone in authority, but then through a little action here and a little “un-action” there the child soon, too soon, learns that it isn’t always good to trust … or to love … or to believe … or to hope … or to care … layer upon layer and the life is lost … but maybe not forever.

If we lose ourselves in love then possibly we make the discovery of the life that God has held out for us. From our experiences in life we become afraid to really love – it only leads to hurt or pain or heartache. If we do reach out in love it is normally to continue to feed our layered life and not to free us so we can embrace the life that we have lost on our journey.

Look deep within yourself … discover the core of your being … embrace it … love it … learn from it … be honest with yourself … and then free it to soar upon eagle’s wings … laugh, love, live … and you just might discover the life that you lost on your journey to live.

Quote for today: The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. Richard L. Evans