It's getting late and I feel mentally spent but I can't seem to sleep.
I have moments in life in which I feel utterly confident in the woman I am and who I was created to be. I am capable of many things, including taking care of myself. What throws me off my guard is experiencing other moments in which I completely doubt who I am, what I am made of, and where I am headed. I falter. I fret. I fear. I look around me and struggle to contemplate the things I see and those I love. I feel like a small child unsure of herself and unready to deal with life's worst pains. Rejection. Heartache. Loneliness. Aimlessness. It is during these weak and transparent times that my insecurities become so blaringly obvious that I'm sure everyone around me can see them...and I'm unsure whether to run away or stay put and blurt them out in some half-assed attempt to over-compensate.
I fear the way in which I peg myself as fickle, composed of a heart that is easily persuaded, sometimes equally by lies and truth. I look inside myself and see the makings of a solid and confident individual...but then I wonder why I seem to fall short of this obvious potential. What is it I'm looking for, waiting for, needing?
I completed a pretty big art project tonight for a charity event happening this weekend. It looked pretty cool. I took it to my church to drop it off and other members of our participating visual arts team praised my piece highly.
And I found myself incredibly uncomfortable.
This may sound like mere modesty, but to have a heart-on-my-sleeve moment, I am not a modest person. I am used to being good at nearly everything I do and I am used to being praised...and I know I possess above-average artistic skills. Why did I find myself suddenly shrouded in modesty? When I asked myself why this happened I realized that what I was experiencing wasn't modest humility but immense amounts of pride. Not the kind of pride where you can stick your chest out in a gesture of an obvious job-well-done, but the kind of pride that shadows itself in a modest package, leading the owner to believe it's a justifiable action. But what I realized is just how much my insecurities come from a place of pity, a place of self-centeredness, a place of ultimate pride. I could look at my art piece and recognize the beauty and success in it yet something in me felt the need to be approved through it on more than a surface level. I needed to be seen, more than for just my art, I needed to be understood at my core. One of my biggest fears is that no one will truly see me in this life, that I will be misunderstood, taken for granted, written off as less than I am. Therein lies my ugly pride. This isn't translating from my brain to my fingers very well at the moment...I don't think I'm making sense, it's difficult to articulate what I mean...and I'm rarely at a loss for words.
What I am ultimately seeking is definition in life. I am told over and over and in many ways that I should find my definition in the Lord...and I do to an extent but there is so much more to the tangible me that needs to be defined based on things I can see, touch, experience in a day to day setting...more than just in a spiritual sense. Maybe I am wrong for thinking that and I am attempting to be OF the world rather than IN it...but in this moment I can't help but convey my very real struggle. I am often times too transparent...and don't guard my heart well.
I think it's incredibly difficult for me to be working a job that I won't allow to define me because I dislike it so much and find that is goes so sharply against the grain of my being. I once read a very insightful book geared towards women that pointed out just how much we were created to be defined by the things and people we surround ourselves with. I guess this is to say we do this much more than men (to make a vast generalization). I know there is a relevant point somewhere in there but it's lost on me tonight. I guess I just mean to justify that it's ok to want to define myself in these ways...if it's written in a book it must be legitimate...right? Hint of sarcasm..?
I have reached the end of my ability to process for the time being...and as is probably obvious, I don't come to that point easily.
Forgive this random aside...
but thanks to an amazing Google program I am able to see the rough location of the visitors who hit my blog...and I received 8 hits from the same city in Brazil yesterday...and that's not to downplay the hits I got from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Taiwan, and Serbia! How are these people finding my blog? It's kind of amazing...if you found me in some random way, comment on a post, I would love to know who you are.
It's a really strange feeling knowing that my personal musings are circling the globe...I wonder if there is something bigger to be had from this little old blog of mine.
Perhaps someday I will have an amazing story to tell becuase of it.
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