The Strength of Newness: Losing our Past Selves

Personally, I think I have a beautiful history. I think the things I have done, and more importantly, the people I have met have had an effect on my soul that will last until my death. If I were more narcissistic, I would probably have written a book about my life, about my travels, about my experiences. But the thing that would stick out in every chapter would be the people that I have been blessed to know. I have a very strong belief that the people I meet who share my faith also share a part of my soul. Being affected by the gospel changes you in ways you don't even realize. Because of the gospel, people I meet who have had that same encounter often become kindred spirits almost immediately. And that spirit weaves its way into everything, or it has in my life, up to a point. 

It is this point I find myself at today. My past has been shaped and defined by my experiences and interests, and by the people I have shared those things with. The gospel can change how music sounds, because you are hearing it with ears amazed at the voice and the talent created in the musicians. It can change how you read a book, how you travel, how you hear poetry, because everything is not just of this world, but of the eternal world. Everything can be linked back to the Creator. The most beautiful and expensive piece of artwork was created by hands formed by God. That same God formed the hands of the infant inside me and is still forming the heart and the mind and the body that I will, Lord willing, one day name and hold in my arms. 

These thoughts are not constant thoughts, I am much to selfish to love and glorify God as I should, namely, without ceasing. I love myself far too much to give God the constant worship He deserves. But I have found in my experiences that when I am surrounded by people who believe as I do, and see the world as I do, that I come alive. Only now, when I am struck by my loneliness in Fayetteville, NC am I able to see with clarity (or possibly with rose-colored glasses) the person I have been in the past and the relationships I had that brought out all of those different parts of me. With my enlightened eyes, I am able to discern that it is not specific people who I am longing to be with, but with my own self, with the parts of me that have been buried by my new life. 

Last night my husband and I watched "The Judge" (pretty good, I'd watch it again) and the final scene has a song by Bon Iver. As I listened to the song I tried to place it, I knew I had heard it before and I knew it was a band I really enjoyed. I dug through my memories and came upon the band name, then I googled some of the lyrics and discovered the song name (Holocene). For some reason, remembering how much I enjoyed that music, and thinking back about how long it had been since I had listened to it made me really sad. Well, maybe not sad, melancholy let's say. It made me wonder how many interests I have that have been lost in my new life. How many selves have been lost because I am in a new town where my relationships and experiences are so limited? How many of my selves have been lost because I went from many close girl roommates, to one male roommate (my husband)? How much has changed since I went from Athens, GA to Atlanta, GA, to Geneva, Switzerland, to Bamberg, Germany, and finally to Fayetteville, NC? 

While my husband and I were living in Germany, my husband only got to hunt one time. I knew from things he said and guns he owned that he was really into hunting, but I only really knew him as "soldier stationed in Germany Jonathan," who wasn't able to go hunting all of the time. Since we have been back in America, he has taken every opportunity to enjoy going hunting. He hunts pretty much everything, and so I have been introduced to "hunter Jonathan." The whole thing made me wonder how much he is interested in that he hasn't been able to continue in his new life. And how much have I lost along the way because I am not in the environment for it? I am fully aware these are absolute "First World" thoughts and issues, but as the world seems to be crumbling around us in so many ways, I want to "be all that I can be," as the old army slogan puts it. I want to be alive. I want to be holy. I want to be think deeply, pray thoughtfully and continually, bless the lives of my husband and those around me. I want to have an effect on the people around me, not just wade through them as the walking dead. I want this from my life:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.” 

-Henry David Thoreau 

That quote was made famous by the film "Dead Poets Society" (definitely a film you should watch) and the movie speaks to the my current desires. I woke up realizing I was just a facsimile of myself. Where was the girl who loved rock climbing and reading poetry and talking with friends for hours, uncovering things about the gospel and living a life of WORSHIP. Who is this army wife with nothing to say, who doesn't even know what kind of music she likes? Where is the woman who used to put herself out there and fight to create close relationships, who saw a kindred spirit from a mile away and knew in her heart that they would soon be best friends? Where is that girl who journals and searches for new music that her family makes fun of, who writes love letters to her husband, and cries because of joy? She was weird and made us a little uncomfortable with her attempts to be deep, but she was SOMEONE and she was all HERSELF. (Actually, I can't definitely say that's what people think/thought of me, I'm just guessing here.)

When I am with old friends who remind me of the beauty of feeling connected to someones soul, I often feel like a fraud. I try to remember things I would have done or said, and it sounds coarse and false in my ears. I want to rediscover the friend I was. I want to discover how to be her wherever I am. I don't want to lose myself in my newness and surroundings. I don't want to lose myself in my identity as wife or mother. I think because there is a child growing inside me that I have become all the more aware of the person I want to be, and it isn't who I am. My mother was always very sure to treat my sister and I differently because we were such different people. I grew up being confident in who I was, and while that hasn't gone away, the "who I am" part seems to be fading. 

 I feel like I could also entitle this: "Rantings of a bored housewife;" but it isn't that I am bored, well maybe I am bored my myself. I think the problem is that I have stopped seeking the things that truly satisfy. Because I have gotten more lame, everything in my life is following suit and I have been too lazy to notice. I go through the days without embracing the world, the gospel, relationships. I recently read "Unbroken" (great book) and there was a time Louis Zamberini and 2 other men where stuck in a raft for weeks. What kept them from losing their minds was thinking deeply, talking, remembering, teaching one another things, and sometimes even praying. I write that to say that, while I hope to never be alone on a raft for weeks at a time, I want to remember that who I am is not defined by ANY of the circumstances in my life. I am who God made me. I am a child of the Creator of the world and I am so much more than my many titles past, future, and present. It's so easy to get lost in the present, to forget our true selves, our souls, who we were born to be as we were knit together in the womb. Don't be so easily content with your present circumstances. If you don't take the opportunities to suck out the marrow of life, one day you will find that you've lost the desire to, and then what good will you be? 

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."

Matthew 5:13