Learning to Be Me

Learning to be me has been challenging to say the least. For nearly 17 years, I spent my life pleasing other people and following their leading, believing that their voices were God in the flesh. While I still believe that God can speak through other people as He has proven over and over in the Bible, I have also learned to question the "word" they bring, because so often, people put themselves in the place of God, and speak words that should never be spoken. 

As I have said before, too, God might have something for one person, that He doesn't have for another. So the past 5 years have been spent with me searching after what God wants for me. 

I remember going to get my hair cut for the first time with my roommate at CFNI. My hair was about 2" above my ankles at the time, so there was a lot to cut off! I walked into that Walmart salon with shaking knees and dizzy feeling in my head. The scriptures that were pounded into my head began to flood my memory, about why women weren't supposed to get their hair cut and how I would be displeasing God and why I shouldn't be getting my hair cut. 

The lady behind the desk smiled and was welcoming. She was so excited to be giving me my first haircut since I was five years that she offered to give me the full treatment for the cheap price. I had no clue what the "full treatment" meant. I was just along for the ride! Remember, I am 22 years old at this point. As far as I can remember I only had one other haircut in my entire life. 

The sweet lady took me to wash my hair. She kept asking me how long it took to wash my hair normally and why was it so long. It was the first time I'd ever really thought about how different and unusual I was and I started to feel pressure to be like everyone else. She cut my hair to my waist line. I wasn't ready for it to be shorter quite yet! It would take me a couple more years to get to the point I would be ok with shorter hair. 

I have to admit that my head felt a lot lighter having less hair!! :)

After that, my roommate took me shopping for clothes. She got me a shirt and some pants. I remember slipping into the pants the first time and I felt so weird! Nothing like wearing pants for the first time since the age of 5. Ha! 

Around this time, the summer semester was over at CFNI and the Fall semester was starting. I became an RA for that semester. Probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life. While I enjoyed the "perks" that came with that, like RA retreats and meetings, and stuff like that, I was the one needing ministering to, not to be ministering to others. But I didn't know that, really, at the time. I'm not even sure it had totally hit me that I wasn't in my old church anymore. It was almost as if I were living a good and bad dream. 

To be honest, there are days even now that I think I'll wake up and find this is all a dream. I loved that place. I miss all my friends there. There are days I want to make friends, but then I think of the relationships I had there and am scared that nothing will ever compare to what I had there. There were the girlish cliches and rare "issues" amongst women, but never the cliches and issues women have these days within the church. I've tried making friends over and over and either get disappointed or shunned, or pushed away, or forgotten about. There's only so much texting and calling a person can do without realizing they're not wanted, you know? It was never that way in my old church. While they have a lot of issues, and things about them that are really wrong, one thing they have right is the sense of love, community and togetherness. I miss that. A lot of people I have run into are stuck on religion and their feelings on who they want in their groups and who they don't! It has caused a lot of hurt and confusion.....

Well, it's nearly 4:30 am and I need to get some sleep. I'll keep writing soon!