Unbecoming Yourself
When I was a kid, my parents (when they were speaking to each other) used to go to the local pub on a Saturday night.
They would return home long past closing time, with friends in tow, crank up the calypso music and get full swing into the afterparty.
We had a small painted wall plaque in the living room that said, “Enjoy Yourself, It’s Later Than You Think!”
I never understood what this meant, though it was a source of much laughter and hearty agreement. A secret pass code to my parents’ after-hours club.
Fast forward half a century later…
Now I certainly understand the tongue in cheek message, but I prefer to say it with more sombre sobriety. “There’s no more time for foolishness.”
Which is exactly where I am with my life, about life, and my intent to die empty.
How about you?
Contemplating my own mortality, and the road I have travelled, gives me the impetus to push past my insecurities and bring out what I know is in me. To propagate in this season of sowing. Who knows how many more seasons there will be.
Have you ever felt that way, that there was something in you that just had to come out?
Much of what I have learned on my journey to become myself, has been through a stripping away, a process of unbecoming.
Peeling back the layers brings many tears, but it’s the stripping away, that lightens the load of falsity that the world has piled on. It’s so much better when we have someone who has been there, to come alongside us, as we make that uncertain journey.
I had such an experience recently.
At a Coaching Conference on Discipleship and Spirituality, the Master Coach, Tony Stoltzfus, challenged us to consider what it was we needed, when we wanted to get specific results, with our clients. The light went on.
Why was it that I often felt if my client didn’t have a breakthrough I wasn't giving value?
What if they didn’t have a breakthrough? Where did that idea come from? What was it telling me, about my motive to heal my own brokenness by meeting some misaligned expectation?
Life is not a value proposition.
A few minutes, and some powerful questions later, I had more than the answers. I had a personal encounter with Jesus.
There is no one who can touch my life, or yours, like He can.
In Him I have all the value, affirmation, and reason for my existence that I need.
Walking out of that conference with one less hole in my heart, brought me enough immediate healing to throw off the cloak of oppression that kept me second guessing myself, piling on credentials, and hoarding information. That tricky process of avoidance. Getting ready, to get ready, to serve in the way that God is calling you.
I’m okay with being not enough. Are you?
Because in Him I have my sufficiency. I’m okay with some people finding me irrelevant, uninteresting or plain, out to lunch! I’m not for everyone, and everyone is not for me, thank God.
But, as my mentor Brendon Burchard would say, “I’m here!” and I’m writing, not because I want to say something, but because I have something to say.
She who has an ear, will hear.
Breaking free from the confinement of false identity and expectations is not easy, but it is exactly what we are called to do. If that’s what you want for yourself, I hope you will join me on the journey.
