New Year’s Resolutions have always been a nemesis of mine. Every January 1st, I would compile my list with every intention of keeping them throughout the year. But, lets be honest, I barely kept them through the first month, if that long. They soon became a joke to me, knowing I would not last through the commitment of a year.
This year, I watched several of my friends ask the Lord for a word or phrase that would essentially be their theme for the year. I thought this was pretty neat & began to ask the Lord for a “word” for myself. Through the stillness of one morning, I felt like He was saying, “You”. As you can imagine, I was confused & thrown for a loop since I was looking more for a word that had to do with Him not me. Then one day, it hit me like a ton of bricks, He wasn’t saying “You” in the context of self-centeredness, but instead that I needed to practice being me, the one whom He created me to be. Most of my life I thought I had been trying to imitate Christ, but as I examined further I realized that I was really just trying to imitate the people around me.
When I started Kindergarten, I came home one day & in a rather demanding voice, told my mother that I wanted some Gloria Vanderbilt jeans & I would not go to school until I had some. She looked at me with some confusion & assured me that I would indeed go to to school the next day even though I would still be sporting my Lee jeans that she had bought me before school. You see, my mom would take my sister & I on a school shopping trip every year before school started. We would drive to the big town of Monroeville & hit up the Vanity Fair. This place was super sized & had everything you wanted, clothes wise, in one place. They had 3 kinds of jeans: Lee, Levi’s & Gloria Vanderbilt. We never had a choice at to buy. With 3 growing kiddos, it was always the Lee jeans for my family. Now for those of you that don’t know what Gloria Vanderbilt jeans are, they are like the modern day Miss Me jeans. My cousin, who was just 4 months younger than me had some of these jeans. We also just so happen to be in the same class at school, so I wanted to be just like her. Imitating…started young.
2 Peter 3:3-4 | “Do not let your adorning be external-the braiding of hair & the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear- but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle & quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”
My imitation of others only grew from there. In second grade, I moved schools. After several months, I began to fit in with my other classmates. I became fast friends with 2 girls. We stayed friends all throughout elementary & high school. But my friends looked different from me. They were both petite, blonde hair, green eyes & olive skin. I on the other hand, was tall, red hair, brown eyes & pale skin. I saw them as being what all the magazines described as beautiful. I envied what they looked like, which led to constant dissatisfaction with the way I looked.
Samuel 16:7 | “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’”
One of the things that I started noticing in high school was the family life that others had. My dad worked very hard when I was growing up, so much that it caused him to miss out on many things. We seldom took family vacations & he missed most of my games that I played. I wanted what other people had. I wanted the stories & support that their dads were giving them. I wanted my life to look like theirs. I was so caught up with “what I didn’t have” that I totally overlooked what I did have. So again: I wanted my li…
