I Love You.

Recently, certain things have prompted me to really examine my personality. These things include people commenting on how outgoing I am or on how many friends I have or how happy I am, but nothing forced me to actually think on all of these things together until Priscila informed me that I was going to be sharing my testimony for welcoming. Maybe to some of you sharing isn't such a big deal, but as I've already pointed out, sharing is not my favorite thing. When it comes to my testimony, I'm averse to sharing because it requires me to (however briefly) mention the status of my family and also dredges up bits and pieces of my past (not a k-drama melodramatic past or anything, but still. Stuff that contributed to my make-up. Foundational Octavia business.). After that bomb was dropped, I spent the rest of the week thinking about how to present my testimony. Would I sort of gloss it over with a quickie version, or would I try to be open? Again, some of you may have been super quick with that decision, but I really had to work to convince myself that being open with welcoming was a good thing and that it was going to be okay. When I started to think about my testimony I realized that everything was pretty short. Thinking back, there are a few things I didn't mention that maybe I could have (should have?). Regardless, I decided to sort of supplement the basic "and then I got saved" bit of my testimony with a way that God has actually been working in my life. This finally brings me back to what I was talking about at the beginning of this post.

Every time someone tells me how outgoing I am or comments on my friendly/outgoing/whatever personality, I mentally do a bit of a double-take. It's not like I try to be mean or anything--I do try to be nice to everyone. But people sometimes bring it up like it's...more than expected? I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that, but I'm just going to go on. I was talking to a couple of the sisters a couple weeks ago, and in response to one of the things we were talking about one of them said, " I just don't understand why with your personality this is hard for you." And I was like, what the heck? What personality? And then I felt like I needed to procure a little piece of information that hinted at what a broken mess I really am on the inside. I don't know if anyone happened to see a few of my gchat statuses last week, but the general idea was "Everyone thinks I'm that version of myself so...am I?" Because now literally everyone thinks that I'm a friendly, happy, outgoing person who loves everyone, and I wasn't quite sure if I saw myself that way. I've had problems loving people in the past. Constant rejection will do that to a person. It wasn't just direct rejection like boy stuff, though there was plenty of that. As much as I tried to deny or ignore it, my parents' assorted divorces and remarriages have effectively wreaked havoc with my psyche, along with other family related drama. I used to really struggle with loving people because I knew I couldn't guarantee that they would always love me back. Whether I did a good job of hiding it or not, I was a heartbroken child for a really long time. Despite all that, God somehow changed my life while I wasn't looking. My family situation hasn't much improved, and as previously stated on this blog there are not, nor have there ever been any boys, but regardless God made me happy. He restored my capacity to love people, and He gave it back to me stronger than it had ever been (though a certain Wharton personality quiz will argue that I'm still limited in my capacity to love and be loved--screw Wharton).

Thanks to welcoming and that crazy, domineering, loving Priscila, I was finally able to understand a bit more of the prayer I got all the way back during AMI. All of this time I've continued to believe that I'm a broken person, and probably parts of me still are. But rejection just isn't my identity, at least not anymore. God was working in ways I hadn't even realized until now (whoa, I just started crying a little), and He made His love my identity. I'm just a little overwhelmed, because I've gone all this time thinking, Oh, God's made me a little more mature, a little happier. I didn't recognize myself when I first looked at myself during my testimony soul-searching time. I didn't recognize that He completely overhauled my entire personality and turned me into someone He can use. I've gone from not being able to really like anybody to desperately wanting to love everybody, regardless of whether or not they'll ever love me back. I'm definitely not perfect at it--I'm still extraordinarily insecure as to whether or not people really care about me, and the more I care about somebody the more insecure I am. Just ask Priscila how often I remind her to pay attention to me/love me/etc. It's only half-joking. In the case of some people in my class, I have trouble trying to reach out to them because I feel like they don't like me. I'm not a perfect love machine. But wow...am I better.

I know sometimes I digressed a bit, but...whatever.