Have you ever felt completely drained? Like a dry sponge? So emotionally sapped that you had no energy except to just drag yourself through the routine of each day so you could collapse into bed at the end? That's where I was at the beginning of this year. For the first few months of 2019 I was truly deep in a constant cycle of depressive episodes and bouts of anxiety.
The previous couple years of constant transitions, dead ends, and a toxic relationship had completely sapped me and left me feeling emotionally and spiritually empty. By the end of May, I felt like a wisp of my normal cheerful and vibrant self, and I wondered how I'd gotten there.
I had almost completely lost sight of what my passions and goals were. I had little direction for my future. All my options held uncertainty, and my previous choices with painful consequences left me paranoid to do the wrong thing again. My distance from Christ and confusing life had led me to a point of deep insecurity and a low self-esteem like I'd never experienced.
In an effort to change this, and reclaim some of my former self on a healing journey, I set out on a campaign of self-discovery. It sounded positive and wholesome at first - figuring out who I was, focusing on myself, defining what made me...me.
In today's world, it seems everyone wants to find themselves. They choose social media posts, vacations, new hobbies and jobs, even abandoning certain tracks of life altogether - all with the goal of discovering who they are as individuals and what their purpose is. Where do we find our identity? How do we understand exactly what we were meant to do? How do we get a clear view of just who we are? It can seem natural to answer these questions by self-searching.
If we go looking for ourselves inside of ourselves, we might find a lot of good things. Determination, strength, resilience, creativity, uniqueness, beauty...all of these are qualities that we are given and designed with. But if we stop there, or even start there, we miss the bigger picture. We are limited to seeing ourselves only through our narrow perspective.
The key to truly understanding who we are and what we were made to do can be found in the very beginning of Scripture. God starts off the Bible by talking about how He made man and woman in His image (Genesis 1:26, 2:22). The answers to our self-searching lie in our Creator's character.
Here's the truth: you cannot know who you are until you know who God is. You cannot understand your purpose until you understand God's character and how you are to reflect that. This year, I spent time searching for myself separately from my faith. I was almost solely self-focused in the name of "healing." It was all about me, what I wanted, what my goals were. I failed to realize I could only understand my purpose, passion, and potential by first understanding the One who had given them to me. In my relationship with Christ, I was placing myself first.
It took me time to realize there is no way that I can fully comprehend my own image, self, purpose, and character without understanding who my Creator is, the one who I reflect. Without understanding where I have come from, and who created me, I cannot truly understand what I am meant to be, what I am designed to do.
Let's imagine that one day a beautiful painting in an art museum became self-aware. It looked itself over and said, "Well, I have lovely mountains, a river, and beautiful green trees. I am a lovely scenery picture. I am uniquely made, one of a kind. I add something special to this gallery." These are all excellent and accurate realizations, but that's as far as the painting will be able to get on its own, without understanding who its painter is.
By knowing the artist, it can much better comprehend itself. It must know who the artist is and what the artist's intention was in its creation. It then can see how the artist's personality and character are revealed in its design. Only then will it truly have an in-depth understanding of itself and what it was meant to be. Only then can it truly appreciate its design and purpose...because it knows who made it.
We are God's artwork. We are made to reflect Him. It is not all about us. When we fix our eyes on our Creator and fully understand who He is, our perspective changes. And when we find Him, we can truly find ourselves. So, instead of self-searching and looking inside ourselves for limited answers, we can look to the One who has all the answers and be made truly complete in Him.