Good Morning, this is your wake-up call.

You may think of me as someone who is very strong and confident and comfortable with who I am. However, the truth is that up until the past few months I have been trying to please everyone. I have been trying to fit myself into the person people expect me to be. Trading parts of myself and changing who I am so that others will be happy. And because everybody likes different things, over time I developed a lot of versions of myself. And after a long time of trying to keep this up and always being a little less than myself, I’ve decided enough is enough.

I can still remember when it started. I can pinpoint the moment. It was at lunchtime in high school and my friends and I were sitting around going through each other’s mp3 players and looking at the music that was on them. Mine was full of things like Gordon Lightfoot, Norah Jones, and Paul Simon, and compared to what my friends had on their mp3 players this was subpar. So that day, when I got home from school, I got rid of my music and put a bunch of the music my friends liked on my iPod. I wanted to fit in.

From that point on I thought a lot about other people’s opinion of me. Whether or not they would like my clothes, my hair, my music, taste in movies, etc. etc. Now, I know that it’s not uncommon to want to fit in, in high school. But for me it didn’t end there. I mean, it didn’t carry on to the same extent but ever since then I have still been trying to be what others want me to be. I’ve been so scared that people wouldn’t like me for me that I’ve been whoever they wanted me to be. And I’m not trying to blame anyone for me acting this way, it was my choice. I wasn’t strong enough to just be me.

But a few months ago I had my wake up call. After trying to be someone I’m not for so long I realized how tense I was. My body physically felt tight and constricted, I had been so careful of everything I did and every move I made so that no one would dislike me, I had given myself absolutely no freedom.  And I was reminded of something I had learned in Bible school a couple years ago: “to be fully known is to be fully loved”. I realized that there is no possible way to make everyone happy or to be the person that everyone expects me to be. All I can do is be the person God made me, and people can either take it or leave it. My hope is that I am now finally confident enough to just be me and not worry about what others think. Because ultimately God’s opinion is the only one that really matters and He loves me no matter what.