Tired

       I woke up at noon today, utterly exhausted. Lying in my bed I couldn’t help but wonder how I could possibly be this tired after a long night (and half a day) of sleep. It's not as if I have a job working me to the bone each day, or a child to feed and care for. What is it about my life that is so damn tiring? Even as I ponder this, the menacing beast of guilt flickers through my mind.

        What am I so tired of? Eating three square meals a day- and then some? Walking around a beautifully peaceful campus safely learning about my surroundings? Going about my day on my own two, healthy feet and sleeping under a roof every night? Guilt whispers that I have no right to be tired.

        My mind, however, calls loud and clear- 'Bullshit.'  I wake up at seven every morning to spend four hours attempting to absorb facts and processes that I have never before heard of, then turn around and study these facts and processes until my thoughts begin to skip like a scratched CD. Instead of relaxing, I go 'home' to a hall of other people with similar problems as well as their own emotional baggage who all want something from me, be it the ego boost of false companionship, food or resources, a pity party, an therapist, a tutor, the list goes on.

         Perhaps this is the key… I know who I am to the people around me. Student, teacher, number, character, ginger, classmate, nerd, cuddle buddy, hall mate, freshman. I could go on and on listing who I am to the people in my life, yet I haven’t the slightest idea of who I am to me. Ouch.

          At this point I am just laughing- to me this realization is worthy of a literal 'lol'. Here I am, puzzled by my lack of energy and overall zest for life, all the while living as someone else. What I have been doing here at Warner Pacific is discovering what each person want of me and becoming that person for whoever needs me. In this way I have been giving up bits of myself to please the needs and wants of my peers… with each person comes another version of myself but I can not settle on who I really am because I don’t actually know who that is. Just the thought of it is tiring me out!

         Obviously something has to be done about this. I can't go on being the person that everybody else needs, at least not without knowing how to come back to myself. So I have to figure this out then, the question that I have so cleverly and stubbornly managed to put off until now; Who am I? More specifically- Who am I to me?

        These are such monumental questions, and with some truly vital answers, that I am mildly overwhelmed. I think it would behoove me to begin by asking questions about something that I know rather than about something I don’t know. I am going to begin this quest for self by seeking out not who I am to me but who I am to God- at least that way I will  want to know the answers to the questions that I am asking.

So here it goes; this is the first step in a long process of questions and answers, wins and losses, weaknesses and strengths, searching for myself in the only place I really know- the Bible. I know that this journey will be a rigorous one but in the end I will (hopefully) learn how to rest in the knowledge of who I am to God and to myself.  Maybe I will even get some sleep.