Article #2 You

I fondly remember taking our family to the hometown Amusement Park.  Those warped mirrors which made the person standing in front of them either skinny or fat were always good for a belly laugh or two.   Those reflected images were supposed to be a joke.  This rest stop in building your soul road map is serious and sobering, not a joke.  Over the years we have become acquainted with many people who carry a distorted view of themselves.  Who am I?  What have I become?  Am I molding, shaping into a person I always wanted to be?  Perhaps even the person God had in mind when he made me?  Soul searching can become soul building.  This area requires significant work.  If you do not do you then you don’t get done and the world is incomplete as a result.   Start with introspection.  Then take a risk to ask people what they think about you.  Ask people close to you for an honest, direct, brutally frank assessment of how you show up when you are around them.  Choose good people who know you well and like you anyway.  Go ahead and do those two tasks then come back. We will wait.  Are you getting a picture of the REAL YOU!

Years ago, we were doing some soul building work with a middle age professional mother with one elementary age child.  She was in a very challenging season of life.  In a moment of genius Elaine asked her to think of herself. Period.  Not as a worker or a mother but just as person whom God loves.  We sat together for a long time as she let her imagination wander.  We asked her what she was seeing.  With a furtive glance over at me she said in a barely audible whisper, “I see me standing in front of a full-length mirror completely naked.  I have yellow post it notes stuck all over me with words written on them.”  These were words and phrases other people had told her she was.  For example, her former husband continuously called her FAT.  She wasn’t.  The tone of the post it notes cast her in a light like the Amusement Park mirrors.  It wasn’t funny.  We took her through a soul building process to create an accurate image of who she really was.  All those incarcerating labels other people had been sticking to her were removed and replaced over time with her true identity.  Not a label other people had attached but as something which emerged from within!  She became a new person.  We saw a new soul bloom from within because she began to know true you from the labeled you.  You should see her now.  It takes breath away!  Building your soul roadmap is an emotional experience.