What it doesn't mean about you.

It was a cloudy late Winter afternoon as I sat in a noisy cafe. I looked up at the person sitting at the other end of the table just as they uttered to me, "Umm, do you know what this says about you??". I looked back down at my hands, wrists, and arms, my body covered with what was an itchy rash, mysterious in origin. This means something about you. Those declarative words about who I was rang directly into my heart, as direct as a gunshot three feet away from me, a voice louder than the multiple conversations occurring simultaneously in the room, the people moving in and out of the cafe, the streetcars outside, or anything else happening around me. I couldn't muster the strength to speak an audible answer. I felt my breath, my life, being taken from me, slipping further and further away. I was lost in a sea of confusion about my life and my sense of self. I felt alone, uncomfortable, and afraid. What was most agonizing to me was a deep sense of fear and shame, fear from not knowing what would happen to me, shame for everything that was happening to me. I felt a shame for being in my own body, the shame of being what this thing that was happening was causing people to think and say about me. What's worse is that I felt like it was so clear to the world around me, I felt everyone believed what I believed at that moment...

Have you ever heard or felt those words: Do you know what this means about you? Whether it was something you did, an addiction you've struggled with, something that happened to you.. they can all be a voice of declaration about who you are. Clearly, you are what you do, you are what you think, you are what happens to you in this world, right? That's the way we learned how to form conclusions even from a very young age. But is it the way we were designed to form conclusions? Was this how we were meant to come to conclusions about our value, worth, and identity? If not, where did it come from?

We have all forgotten what we already know to be true intuitively and our place of reasoning and emotions hijacked. Our thoughts and ways have been turned over to animalistic form, just as Nebuchadnezzar in his mind has turned into a beast. (Daniel 4:16)

Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

We have been designed to have the mind of Christ, given the spirit of Christ. We are daughters and sons of God. (Ephesians 4:23, Romans 12:2) It is time for us to re-learn what we already know in Christ, who we really are, how we really act. We are reminded of who we really are, think, and act when we look unto Christ, our perfect representation of one risen from the dead.