Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything! Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place!
If you have done any “self-help” work and researched finding your “purpose” – you might stumble across the concept of elimination. This is (one of the 90000) theories that are used when you are trying to figure out what your purpose is in life. The “practice of elimination” is the idea that in order to identify what you are meant to do in life, you start by identifying things you DONT want to do, and therefore, by process of elimination, you inevitably arrive at your answer (or at least you’re in the ballpark).
The reason I bring this up is because God sometimes does the eliminating for us; whether we ask for it or not … thus pushing us closer to who He wants us to be.
If you have suffered loss, you are acutely aware that your life will not continue as you thought it would. I think one of the harder (less talked about) parts of death & divorce is when the realization sets in that the dreams you had for your future are now also gone. Those dreams and the future you had planned are no longer possible because the people who were in those plans are no longer with you. It catches you unaware – at least it did for me. Grieving is so focused on the loss of the person (and rightfully so) that everything else seems inconsequential. But then eventually reality sets in that everything attached to that person has also become a casualty and a whole other layer of grief emerges. So now what!?
Grief and loss change you. It just does. And it’s possible that the change is undoing all the things that were not meant for you – whether you agree or not.
And I didn’t agree. I still technically don’t (accepting and agreeing are two different things).
Enter the “process of elimination”. Basically life, aka God, has determined that we are no longer going down the path that WE were expecting to. It’s been eliminated. And therefore, the version of you that was interwined with another is now gone. You are forced to “unbecome” that version of yourself.
I have had to “unbecome” being “Joan’s daughter” & “J’s wife”. And honestly, I dont know what that makes me now …
There is NO WAY you could tell me that I have to live my life without my mom in order to live my “best life”. I would have absolutely laughed at you and probably wouldn’t be your friend anymore (if we’re being really honest … ). My husband was a strong follower of Christ, I thought I had a God-centered marriage. I lived my life very confidently with the identities I had cultivated through these relationships and was very happy with them! But here I am now – living a life without either of them and therefore really struggling with what my new identity is… and will be! The “process of elimination” is wreaking havoc on my personal identity.
Who am I without them?!
There is so much to unpack with the reality that you are no longer the person you were or thought you were going to be. There are things about myself, my relationship with them, and with God, that have now made me take a deeper look at where my priorities and alliances really were. And who do I really want to be!
I personally believe that God removed my mom & husband from my life so that I would focus more on him and that he has plans for me that I would not be able to fulfill with them here.
It might sound dramatic or even cruel. But personally, I starting to accept it and even understand it. I can see now, that I was never going live a truly Christ-centered life with them in it I was extremely codependent to both. Truthfully, unintentionally, God was not my first (or second) priority. This realization has taken me a while to acknowledge & deal with. There is some shame and disappointment in myself that God had to go to such extreme measures to get my attention and change the direction of my life. But I am SO grateful that He has such big plans for me and my eternal life that He got my attention, as drastic as it was
#unbecoming
My prayer for you today is that you have enough peace in your heart to look past your current heartbreak, sadness, and “elimination” and get to a place where you can be grateful that God loves you so much he wasn’t going to let you keep living a life you weren’t meant to live! There is something amazing on the other side of all of this sadness & loss. I pray you to have the heart to acknowledge it & the courage to go after it. I pray this also for myself.
XO
Tay
