"This is your
life, are you who you want to be?"
I distinctly remember driving down 32nd street in Phoenix about six
years ago. I was driving my Jeep
Wrangler and all the doors and roof were off.
I was coming home from work on a Friday afternoon and the sun was out in
a clear blue sky. I didn't normally
listen to Christian music at that time because I thought it lacked imagination
but this particular day I guess 103.9 The Edge
must have had too many commercials or something because I switched it over to
the Christian station. An outdated
Switchfoot song was playing that I had heard dozens of times but never really
listened to. I don't remember any of the
verses but the chorus asked a simple question, "This is your life, are you
who you want to be?". For some
reason I actually truly listened to that question as a question and not just as
a chorus to a song. "This is your
life, are you who you want to be?"
This is my life.
I am in control of my life. I am not a pawn in someone's game, I am not a
prisoner in someone's jail cell, I own
my life and I make my own
decisions. At the end of my life nobody
is going to be held responsible for me except myself. I have
the power to control who I am and who I am becoming. This isn't someone else's life, this is my
life. I think it took a lot of guidance
from others and a long time for me to even come to a realization of that
statement. I'm not just the product of
my influences and circumstance or the people around me, this is my life.
I am responsible for who I am.
Then for a while that realization brought dread. "Responsibility? What's that?" was another line in a song
that had resonated with me in high school.
Who wants responsibility? I
didn't trust myself. Give me power over
my own life and more than likely I'd just screw everything up. That's what I thought. So being in control of who I was was an
unfair burden, a curse even. I didn't
ask for this power, for this responsibility.
What a cruel sentence! Giving
someone the power of choice without any of the information needed to make the
choices! It felt like it was forced upon
me. But I kept going and as I matured
and as I started following Jesus I started realizing that that responsibility
wasn't actually a curse, in fact, it was a blessing!
I am not limited to
the stunted imagination of my peers, I am not destined to anything I don't
want, I am not doomed to failure. I have
power over my own life! I have power to determine
what I do and who I am. I know myself
best and who I want to be and I have the power to make that happen! I'm definitely not going to screw it all up;
after all, I am the most informed person on the planet when it comes to Brant
Copen. Nobody has more information than
I do, if anyone can succeed at determining Brant Copen's destiny then I
certainly can! I started taking
advantage of that responsibility. I
started doing things that I wanted to do.
Traveling, making friends, learning new things, strengthening
relationships. What a blessing to be the
owner of my own life! I get to do
whatever I want!
That's where I was
at as I drove my Jeep home from work on that Friday afternoon six years
ago. I knew that this was my life, but
was I who I wanted to be? Had I been
using the freedom and the power I had over my own destiny to become the person
I really wanted to be? It's funny how a
person can miss out on that. I know
people who have lived their whole life knowing that they had authority over
their own destiny but not using it to become who they wanted to be. They wanted to be loved and so they started
becoming whatever they thought everyone would approve of, but they turned out
becoming someone they never wanted to be.
Or they wanted to be significant and so they worked really hard at
achieving things that they associated with significance but in the end they
became someone they never wanted to be.
This song in this
moment gave me a reality check.
"Are you who you want to be?"
No. I thought about it and the
answer was definitely no. What I really
really deep down wanted to be was someone who could look back on my life with a
clear conscience when it was just me and God in a room and know in my heart
that I did the best with what I had.
That I truly genuinely loved the people around me, that I allowed God to
use me as He saw fit, that I used my life to improve everyone and everything I
came into contact with instead of hurting or destroying, that I was the kind of
person that could be trusted, the kind of person that lived a radical lifestyle
of self-denial, that walked in boldness and courage. I wanted to believe in my heart that I was
truly within the will of God; not just what other people said was the will of
God, but what I believed in my heart was the will of God. I wanted to contribute to the improvement of
the future of the world, to God's Kingdom coming "to earth as it is in
Heaven". I wanted to take advantage
of the blessing that life is and truly enjoy what life had to offer and not
waste my time waiting for things to happen to me or just waiting around for old
age and death to come. "Are you who
you want to be?" I wanted to be someone who loved God and others sacrificially not because I felt I had to or because I was willing to but because that was my default, what I really enjoyed doing, because deep down that's who I was. But that's not who I
was. I still had a lot of work to do.
Now looking back six
years ago I guess I thought if I could just muster up the will-power for a good
day or two I could change my own identity.
The truth is though, I'm still not really who I want to be now. There's still a lot of things I wish I could
change about who I am over night, but it's not that easy. Becoming who you want to be takes patience
and hard work and self control. It takes
perseverance and humility and resilience.
It takes a lot of prayer. A lot
of prayer. It takes the willingness to
reevaluate yourself and once again sit down and ask yourself, "This is
your life, are you who you want to be?"
