you are not a name or a height, or a weight or a gender
you are not an age and you are not where you are from
you are your favorite books and the songs stuck in your head
you are your thoughts and what you eat
for breakfast on Saturday mornings

you are a thousand things, marvelous things,
but others often choose to see
only the things you are not
~Edited and adapted quote by m.k

How far back would you have to go to recollect what it was like waking up and not caring what other people thought? Can you remember when you started tip-toeing through life in order to please others? How many of your actions, appearances, and situations have become moulded over the years by the perceptions of others? Whose life is it you’re actually living? Is it yours, based on who you truly are and how you honestly feel about things and what you really want out of life? Or is it a life more or less dictated by others? Has it ever occurred to you that those “other” people you’ve worried about are doing the same–living a kind of “fabricated” existence because they too are worried about what you and others think of them? Do you ever wonder what life might be like if we’d all just stand up and be the person we genuinely are, the one we were meant to be all along?

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not implying that this kind of allowing-what-others-think scenario has influenced everyone else but me. I was just as inclined to play that game as anyone else, but as I’ve aged, I’ve come to have an intense dislike for pretense and an earnest appreciation and acceptance of who and what Natalie is. That doesn’t mean for a split second that I believe myself to be perfect or a be-all, end-all pillar of knowledge and/or wisdom. It just means that this is what God made me to be, and so I’ve come to realize, especially since I’m made in His image, that I and everyone else for that matter should be able to stand alone on our own gifts and merits or lack of them. But ya wanna know what the real game changer was in my decision to stop allowing what others think to have any place whatsoever in my life? It was when they were nowhere to be found during “the dark nights” of my soul! So wouldn’t it be grand if we could all just be our one of a kind selves and thus a true-to-self participant in this thing called life instead of being a concocted facsimile or a mere spectator.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ~Genesis 1:27  ✝

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. ~Psalm 139:14-16  ✝

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