Maybe I’ve been lucky. It seems I’ve been asking the question of who I am and trying new things for most of my life. However, maybe it’s more than luck, maybe it happened so I could share it with others and help them to move forward, too.
Somewhere in the boxes of things from my childhood, there is one of those diaries that has a lock on it, a gift for a birthday somewhere along the line. I know around fifth grade I asked who I was in my diary, already seeing how I reflected to be different things to different people. In sixth grade, I began journaling steadily, a task i continued to do for the bulk of my years (although there are several years at one point).
To go back and read those journals, what I find is a girl trying to find herself, knowing she was bound for bigger things, and despite the challenge and nervousness of trying new things, doing them anyway. My younger sister’s suicide when I was 21 didn’t stop me, it just made me reflect even more on what was most important to me. After all, just months after her death, I found myself bound a summer internship at USA Boxing at the United State Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Life didn’t stop because she had ended her life; there was even more to do.
I got where I am because I have kept asking the questions, continued to explore opportunities in life, even ones I wasn’t sure about but I could at least say I did try (believe me, my flute-playing skills should be long forgotten).
It’s a long road and it’s one, much like prayer, that doesn’t always have the answers. But as I dragged myself out of bed in the cold this morning to run and then go swim, feeling like weekend was short, the week ahead feeling long, I am reminded that sometimes life is like that.
Continuing to trudge forward is well worth it though. At some point we reach points of rest, points of fun, and we can take a peek back and see, yes, I know who I am because I walked this road.
Start asking. Write it down. Throw it out there in prayer– when you’re washing dishes, working out, driving. The answers might not come right away but the universe is waiting for you to ask and take off from the starting line. You’ll move forward. You might not see it at first, but it’ll happen. Stay open and let it emerge.