I Gotta Be Me

My mother used to laugh and say I must have been the dumbest one or her five children because it took me the longest to get through school.  She may have been right. I went to seven schools after high school over a period of 27 years trying to learn how to serve God. I wanted to preach, teach, counsel, and write so I could help people live the way God surely wanted them to.  With all that effort I must have worn out my brain. I achieved what one doctor friend called "minimal cognitive impairment." Now I have trouble remembering words, thinking on my feet and speaking clearly. Now I have had to give up a lot of that doing and learn to be. This is my greatest challenge. Frank Sinatra crooned "I gotta be me" as if that was the easiest thing in the world. As the velveteen rabbit learned, to be real one has to know that he is loved by his owner and must be willing to be roughed up a bit. Trying to hop and jump like the "real" rabbits got him nowhere. He only learned to be real by crying a real tear.  Jumping through the hoops and filling squares does not make me real. Only by carrying my cross and going deep within my true self do I sometimes feel the reality I was created for.  And, surprise!! It is beginning to look like that will be where true spiritual energy, provided by the love of God, will have any influence on those I touch. By the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit that may be far more spiritually powerful and influential than all that previous effort.