Who am I?
Many years ago in a college writing class my assignment was to write an essay about who I am. I was a genius of course and wrote all kinds of questions and answers about how at such a young age of only 22 years I could hardly write about who I am when I have not lived long enough to fully understand who I am and contemplated that I will never really know the answer until the day that I take my last breath.
I got an A+ on that paper. Can you believe we were not even required to TYPE it! Oh how times have changed.
So, 16 years later…I still believe I was right, maybe now a little less pompous
To answer that question now…again, oh have times (and I) changed:
I believe that I am a middle class, thirty something white female born into a family with hardworking parents hoping as most parents do that their children will succeed on a higher level than their own. Have I succeeded to the extent that my parents had dreamed? Probably not monetarily, but I do not measure my value or success in that way. Not any longer.
I measure myself against the families next door, across the street, in the poorer and richer neighborhoods as well as royalty, celebrities, superstars, rock stars, doctors, lawyers, janitors, waitresses, strippers, drug dealers, murderers, pedophiles, prostitutes, drug addicts, and homeless. I measure myself against them and find myself their equal.
No better.
No worse.
I measure my value by the love given to me. Not the love from my husband, parents, children or friends, though it is love that I cherish and am thankful for, but rather from believing in God and more importantly the relationship I have with Him because "belief" is not enough. He loves me. He loves all of us, including and not limited to those that I earlier stated that I measure myself against. I follow Christ and though I sometimes stumble, trip or even fall in His footsteps, I will continue to pick myself up, ask for forgiveness, dust myself off and keep following that narrow path. Because of the relationship that He and I have, I know that no matter what I do, He loves me and His love is not increased or diminished by my own actions.
That love, it is the only measure of a man that I need consider. It is there for me and for you, no matter who you are. We are equal.
