i am me, now, for a reason

Sifting through my morning Google Reader routine, I read an article (Standing on Your Tiptoes) that struck a pretty deep chord in me. It describes what I was like as a physical child, and what I'm like as a spiritual child.

The physical:

My parents put me in school a year early. I don't know how intentional this was. I always thought it was because private Christian international schools in Korea were pretty expensive and they weren't about to burn a few K on kindergarten. Which meant I missed out on naptime, a crucial life skill.

What this meant for me was that I always ended up being a full foot or so shorter than everyone else. I think I hit my growth spurt pretty late, too, so up until 11th grade, I looked like I was 12. There are pictures in my middle school yearbook of me playing on the soccer team, literally half the size of my teammates. I'd always get shoes a size bigger so that I could grow into them, bought medium-sized t-shirts hoping they'd fit (they still don't, really) one day. Needless to say, I was anxious to grow and get taller.

My nickname was "peanut." I'm not sure where this came from, but one theory is that in Korean you can say "ddang-kkoma" which is literally "ground-child" which sounds similar to "ddang-kohng" which is "peanut," so as a child who dwells close to the ground, I was a "peanut." I guess I embraced it. I own cbpeanut@yahoo.com and peanutsrule@hotmail.com. Not sure if I really liked it, now that I look back.

The article resonates with me, because I went to the doctors' office anticipating that their accurate measures would tell me that I grew at least a little. I'd stand with my feet as close together as possible, holding myself as tightly as possible, and putting my weight on the balls of my feet so that my heels might rise a little... I wanted to be tall.

The spiritual:

You know, it's not hard to emulate the external workings of Jesus in someone's heart. I mean, you just have to go pray all the time, make every meeting, look like you're worshiping with passion, share the gospel with people around you, talk about God constantly, never visit a party... But something always seems wrong, because people can tell when you're a four-foot-tall child trying to march like a six-foot-tall man. People can tell when you're not comfortable in your own skin.

A huge fear in me is that I'm not where I'm "supposed to be," whatever that means. I spent a lot of my undergrad years trying to "be" at this supposed place, because it wasn't ever enough to be... not spiritually healthy. I guess I didn't understand. The article hits the nail on the head:

God has already graciously given me everything I need to be pleasing in his sight.

And there was one day when the pieces did start coming together. I remember asking my pastor for prayer and his prayer was something along the lines of, "Thank you, God, that you're showing him these things now and not before, because your timing is perfect." And it's true.

I forget this, a lot. There are often times when people ask me how I'm doing and my tongue just feels like a brick and my mind shuts down because I'm afraid to admit that I'm not where I think I should be. And oftentimes, the place I think I should be is a place I would realistically never be. It doesn't help the situation, because then they just tell me to be honest, and I genuinely can't.

The hope that frees me from this is the hope of Ephesians 1:4: That through Christ, I am holy and blameless in his sight. Not anyone else's, not my own, but his sight. I just forget it so easily.

I am where I am because God put me here; I am who I am because that is where God wants me to be. I choose to trust Him.

"The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time." (Psalm 145:15)