I need to find an authentic definition of myself. I mean, who am I April 2026 forward? Everything in my life that I was prepared for is actually mostly gone now. Only what I gave to others feels valid. The easiest identity to grab has always been usefulness ... be the one who gives, who helps, who does a little, who listens, who carries, who fixes. However, although real attributes, they're not really my deepest name. I have often defined myself by what I do for others, and my worth rises and falls on whether I was needed today. I sometimes look at the emptiness I feel, and I rush to fill it with service, or maybe a little money, or caretaking, or patience, or extra availability ---or even endurance.
I also use my identity to minimize what is inward, quiet, and unseen: my perception, my enthusiasm, my tenderness. I need to think not: "What can I still do?" but: "I am One who sees, feels, notices, blesses others, makes meaningful connections, and restores light." When I try to see myself this way, it opens up a lot to do in a day. This new way of life has to be true of us in our quiet, quiet rooms, even after irrecoverable loss, especially when old assignments are over.
Affirmations
I am still becoming, even after the life I expected has ended.
I am loved by God in my being not merely in my service.
I am a woman who has shaped the light that still circles around me, not only by my work, my labor, and by my service, but by my spirit.
I am a keeper of atmosphere and memory and mercy.
I have value even in the moments, hours, even in the days when I'm not useful.
I am not just a worker bee or a provider or a doer. I am a presence.
…….
And so I consider these questions here on Sunday evening April 12, 2026:
When I cannot help, fix, give, host or rescue (although I still often want and need to do those things) what is a life that is still deeply me?
What qualities do I think people have loved in me that had zero to do with service or fixing?
What do I bring into a room that cannot be bought, measured or repaid?
My most painful question: what has suffering refined in me that success never could?
What if this new season of my life is not erasing me, but actually uncovering me?
What if God is not asking me, “What do you provide for your people?” Maybe He is saying, “Daughter, will you let me tell you who you are?”
…..
Sometimes after a person has honestly believed she should strive to build a life around duty, her new identity is in Christ, and it has to be rebuilt not around assignments, but around essence. Maybe my life moving forward is not meant to spend reminiscing and searching and preparing for a role that no longer exists. Maybe I should ponder if I could I become a woman standing in God's truth?
After the old roles have fallen away …or even been stripped away, can I be other than empty as I feel today? —-not left over, not diminished or destroyed, but revealed.
Dear Lord,
I have known how to be needed.
I have tried to learn how to give.
I have known how to work to fill a place in this world with all the care that I could give ——some money, maybe attention, steadiness, and love … but now I need you to teach me who in this world I am when I'm not trying to prove my worth that way.
Show me the self that is permanent, sacred, fully alive.
Tell me who I am in your eyes,
who I am beyond usefulness,
beneath carrying this profound grief,
beneath those old habits that want to continue,
beneath all I used to constantly try to prepare for.
Help me meet this woman who remains.
Amen.
So beautiful and authentic, Gayla. Touches a deep place in me, knowing it comes from such a deep and honest place in you. May this new chapter bring you peace, growth, and excitement in becoming even more gloriously You! Heartfelt gratitude for your sharing. Love you.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful Gayla. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI'm ready to join!! Just dropped in between Plumber stuff, and the SUSCRIBE took me to a page of code. I'd love to receive notice by e-mail. ganjin042@gmail.com that's a zero in there. Haven't read all the post yet; just wanted you to know I'm here. We're all counting time, from Day one til our last day. A character in Walt Longmire says, "I feel like I'm leaking time." Happens sometime, doesn't it.
ReplyDeleteWonderful to have you back. (hugs)
ReplyDeleteDropping in to wait for the dryer, and have looked my eyes and soul full of your entire new abode. I cannot fathom your doubts of WHO-AM-I and what am I good for?, for such a Spirit and Heart for words as you have is WAYYY in the stratosphere of my respect and admiration. You know my own Love Affair with words, and I tell you that I've been touched and impressed and carried to another place EVERY DINGDANG TIME I have ever clicked on Oatmeal and Whimsy, and here you go, just bursting out with all that unbelievably beautiful soliloquy running down the page ALL THE WAY.
ReplyDeleteWith all the language I've gobbled and hoarded and mistreated and jumbled together and thrown out there into the ether all these years, I am absolutely dumbfounded for syllables to convey the enormous effect you can summon with your key-clicks. I've met lots of authors (who in Mississippi hasn't?), but WAY few have any reckoning of how to just put those words out there, like waterfalls just sliding over the edge and spinning their way into rainbows. I still go back and read one quote from LONG ago, which I copied into my journal and have mentioned several times in admiration in awe on LAWN TEA. If you'd laid down your pen at the end of this---
"In our little corner of Paradise all is the same, which is the equivalent of "All is Well," I think. Yet, looking outside, it is NOT the same as I see the red bud blooming wildly and the Spring wheat now sprung nearly 15 inches tall in places, flat in silken obedience to the wind in others."
If you'd tossed your pen out the window, never to touch ink again---that would have been enough.
I'm thinking also of that quilt and its far-reaching effect, its history and provenance, and the immaculately careful hands which divided to share, shaping memories with your fingers, and echoes in each stitch. Marvelous---I can just see those varied fabrics, and can just SMELL the past as you and yours changed a whole into a GLORIOUS SUM of many parts. Ivory Snow and Coty face powder, the whiff of Evening in Paris, Violets pressed between yellowed pages, the faintest linger of the Vicks when the windows are opened for Spring. So many scents and scent-memories attached to that historic fabric and thread. What an undertaking, and what a Heritage. Brava!
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