Don’t Lose Sight of Yourself

I can remember as a high student, I admired everybody that was popular. I wanted to throw a football like the star quarterback or shoot jump shots like the star guard. I wanted the students cheering for me and discussing in their groups how wonderful I was.

Even though I played well enough to make the basketball team and contribute as a team player, I wasn’t satisfied. It seemed as though my contribution was small in comparison what the superstars were doing. In fact, I was so focused on what everybody else was doing that I lost track of who I was. I reached my senior year confused as to what I wanted to pursue academically, and had lost touch with how creative and talented I really was. I lost sight of myself.

Although times have changed, youth are still making the same tragic mistake that I did. They imitate their popular classmates while covering up their own personality. The unique and special person that God created them to be gets lost. They end up becoming an imitation of the people they think they want to be instead of the wonderful person God wants them to be.

God made each one of us. He gave each of us the gifts and talents that He wanted us to have. He had a reason for making us short and bumpy faced instead of tall and smooth skinned. He knew that we would struggle in math and need trifocals to read. He knew that some of us would have parents who could barely make ends meet; therefore we would not be able to wear the latest styles.

He did not put us here by the flip of a coin. We are here by God’s perfect plan and design. If we learn to be content with who we are, we will be much happier. But if we go through life trying to be someone else, we will never amount to anything.

We should always be concerned about what others think about us, but we should not be so insecure that we lose sight of who we are. If we are ever to have success in this life, we will have to make pleasing God our number one priority. And that starts the moment we accept ourselves as God made us, and stop comparing ourselves to others.

For you created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalms 139: 13, 14.

By: Edmund Brown