“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”
What this means to me is: how did we all get so far away from the thought in God's mind when He created each of us? Where we are now is always exactly where we need to be, according to God's Word. But my point is, God created us all with a purpose in mind. Something only that person can contribute to the world. How do we become so far removed? You were birthed as your purpose, you do not "become" it. You therefore, get back to it; even if you have yet to know what that it is.
(A concept credited to Pastor Touré Roberts)
His word says:
“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21);
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28);
“He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.”
(2 Timothy 1:9)
Life is then not about becoming anything, it is about unbecoming things we have become. We take on so many pseudonyms: wife, husband, father, daughter, son, sister, brother, nephew, niece, grandchild, grandparent, aunt, uncle, teacher, lawyer, doctor, janitor, intern, full-time student, full-time parent, CEO, investment banker, public relations, minister, coach, salesman, stylist, musician, artist, etc. This is obviously an exhaustive list. However, extremely necessary to state, just to put into context just how many titles we bear and take on while being here. This does not even touch the things we bear that we are in denial about; our strongholds. Fear, complacency, stagnation, inadequacy, low self esteem, slothfulness (procrastination, laziness), gluttony (a poorly kept temple), jealousy, coveting, selfishness, exploitative, immodest, wasteful, excessive exogenous ingestion (I do not mean vices in moderation, I am referencing "getting "f***ked up."), anger, dishonesty, infidelity, arrogance, pompousness, esotericism (relishing in being understood by very few and being difficult to deal with), and lastly regarding love as something you can only do when you are being loved back. So do you see? Do you see who you have become? While you were trying to "become" who you're meant to be?
Charles Dickens says:
It is not a slight thing when they,
who are so fresh from God, love us.
- Charles Dickens, regarding children
(If you know me then you knew it'd go in this direction, children are my life. Haha.) Children are raw, and fully in purpose. They love wholly, they perform wholly, they understand simply, and they question until clarity. Our greatest commandment is to love. They are so fresh from the mind of God, that they see magic because they look for it. And if I had to define beauty, that is it.
“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Children teach us that race doesn't exist, nudity doesn't exist, fear doesn't exist, hate doesn't exist, anger doesn't exist, laziness doesn't exist, dishonesty doesn't exist, arrogance doesn't exist: there is only one thing and that is love. That is doing all things earnestly and in full effort and in their every fiber exuding love. They just...are.
Being here has changed us, as it eventually changes them.
“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”
― Khaled Hosseini
All things are learned, and thus have to be unlearned. Some of us are ahead of the game, the world pushes onto us and we push back and don't become AS MUCH AS some of our peers; but it does not change that we are not who we were born as. So will you allow God to heal who you REALLY are? He can not heal who you pretend to be. Will you humble yourself? Will you stop silencing our children, regarding them inferior, and let them teach you how to get back to your purpose? Will you allow the light, the sun, into your dark places? Will you allow yourself to be stripped down? Denuded? Bare?
Cheers to being naked in Christ. De[Nude]d. Welcome.