Day 24 - Identity Part 2 To Yourself Be True

Be true to yourself, even when others come against you or try to take you down different paths and roads. If you cannot be true to who God created you to be, you will never discover contentment or completeness or wholeness. If you cannot be true to who you are, no one else is ever going to be.

“But what if being who I truly am upsets or alarms or challenges others? Surely it is better that I hide those parts of myself so that others aren’t offended?”

But why should any part of who you truly are bring so much shame? God created us to be and live as whole human beings. That means accepting and holding lightly and gently all of who we are and are to become.

It is like he has made us as a blueprint, like an architect’s plan of this wonderful new home that he wants to live within, called 'me'. He knows every room and the layout of the floors, ceilings, doors and windows. He wants this house to be open to him and others and so there are parts of the house which will be for hospitality. However, he also wants some rooms that must only be for us alone, our safe places, where we are free to be ourselves.

The home must have no ‘no go’ areas, because these place become our rooms of shame and hidden secrets or failings or deep regrets. They become like a cellar that is buried beneath our house, hiding and keeping locked away all the things we no longer want the world or ourselves to see.

Yet the cellar is an integral part of us too and he doesn’t want any room in the home of our house to be locked and closed off. Therefore, sometimes he needs to take us back there, to show us that some of the things which we once feared or were scared of or shamed into hiding away, are not as awful as we remember them to be.

He only ever takes us into our cellar when he knows we no longer need to be haunted by these things and when we are ready to see that some of the things we remember as a fierce, growling rottweiler are nothing of the sort. Instead we see a toothless little dog unable to bite and whose bark no longer frightens us.

He wants to free us so that we are no longer scared or ashamed of any part of ourselves. He is not ashamed of us for he knows and loves and accepts us as we are. If he can do that, he wants us to know that freedom too. Instead, he wants us to be free to fill this room with colour and new memories and joys and celebrations that could never find their way into this cellar without us first being able to clear out all the untruths, lies and falsehoods in our life.

The cellar was often the first room built in our foundations. Many of our fears and shame come from our earliest years. Some of our foundational teachings about life, meaning, purpose and our role in it can be faulty and broken. So, he wants to take us back and fill in those cracks with ‘truth cement’, so that our home can lie on solid foundations of truth.

In order to be true to yourself, you need to meet that self; that whole, content, strong, stable, loving, compassionate, good self and learn to accept and embrace them to yourself, in the same way as God does.

Sit quietly and ask God to reveal to you any parts of yourself which you were shamed into hiding away in your cellar. If you get nothing, now may not be the time to go anywhere near your cellar. If you do recall a memory, sit with it gently and see how you feel about it after spending time with it. Sometimes this can be a powerful experience and you may wish to record your thoughts in a journal. If so, take the time to pour out what you are feeling.