Who am I when I'm not MYSELF?

You've done this in the first grade of school, haven't you? Write 5 sentences on MYSELF.

Everyone knows what to write for the first three sentences: name, age and name of school. (All the spellings are on the school calendar cover ;) The next two are a little harder and that's where you gain or lose the marks: two original sentences about myself...hmnnn. We only seem to know who we are based on what others tell us. So we ask our parents and they tell us who they think we are.

As we get older, more people start to tell us who we are and sometimes those names become louder than the one on your school calendar: smart/stupid, nerdy/sporty, hardworking/lazy, sweet/selfish. Everyone seems to know who I am better than I do.

Then there labels we strive for: marks, a certain stream of education, a graduate in this or that, and finally a grand answer to the most popular question of all time: what do you do? (It's supposed to be the polite thing to ask after you've asked someone their name, as if to say not asking that question is not validating the worth and identity of a person.)

So I played along with the world's rules and ticked all (well, most) of the right boxes to earn all the pretty labels that I could hold up to show who I am until one by one they all started fading and falling apart.

I remember clearly the day I realized I didn't know who I was anymore- I told my spiritual Mama: "I've left my job, I don't have any elders to care for right now (that was temporary), I can't have children. I'm just sitting in the house, wondering who I am and where my life is going."

And she wisely replied: Now is when you will discover who you truly are. I knew what she meant in my head because I had long accepted that my deepest and most worthy identity tag was "I am a child of God" but I still had to unlearn all the things I had thought I was and really know this significant truth deep down in my core when nothing else made sense.

Whatever worldly notion of self was left, God used motherhood to destroy it all over the first few years with two babies:

1. I used to think I was highly educated until I realized I had to write down a checklist the pediatrician gave me and stick it up on my cupboard to go through to figure out why my first baby was crying. It read something like this:

(a) check if time for feed

(b) check diaper

(c) check if any bites or rashes or teething

(d) check if bored- (walk baby to a new place in the house)

(e) its probably colic

(No, this topic was not covered in 7 years of formal education about human behaviour). I felt like the stupidest person in the world trying to make sense of that list with a baby screaming in my ear.

2. I used to think I was very patient (having many years of experience as a geriatric caregiver) until I realized I was constantly impatient with baby no. 2 for having extremely erratic sleep for 3 whole years leaving me too fatigued to care for baby no. 1 or myself or baby no. 2!

3. I used to think that if I slept for 6 hours in a row, I could handle anything that came in the day. I was wrong about that too. Turns out 5 years of extreme sleep deprivation changes my brain in a way that no amount of good sleep later can reset it.

4. I used to think I had a great sense of humour and just couldn't get toilet humour or the 'Mr. Bean' type of humour. Since I became a mother, I have laughed many many years alone at events surrounding susus, kakas and myself searching desperately for my phone and telling my husband I can't find my phone: - while on the phone with him! (If only Mr. Bean's filming crew was around, I'd be rich by now.)

5. I used to think I could work hard through the day once I slept well at night. Turns out I could sleep well for two-three hours early in the morning and work hard at dragging myself through the day to keep three human beings alive, well fed and clean. That's all. Hardly anything else got done for years.

6. I used to think I was a very caring and compassionate human being. Truth is I couldn't care less about what happened outside my home in those early years of motherhood. I still come across news from that time period that I had no idea happened at all!

I could go on and on but you get the drift....I had lost all semblance of the person that went by the name on my school calendar/graduation certificates/appointment letters.

So who am I when I'm not myself?

Even when I scramble to search for my brain so I could try using it, God reminds me: You are mine.

Even when I had meltdowns in utter desperation at being helplessly sleep deprived and alone with two babies, God affirmed clearly: You are mine.

Even when I still wake up at the slightest sound in the night and go into full night- watchman- mode in 1 second, God reassures: You are mine.

Even when I laugh wholeheartedly with my children who are laughing at me because I broke wind loudly while putting them to sleep, God chuckles over our laughter: You are mine, girl, you are so mine.

Even when I can't drag my body anymore to do simple tasks I used to do with such ease and excellence, God holds my hand and lifts my body and I know He's saying: You are mine.

Even when I exhale one short prayer for all the people who have asked me to pray for them today, (because I'm just not the focussed intercessor I used to be) I can hear Him saying: Amen, you are mine.

And that morning, as I lay in bed, trying to find a position in which my body hurt the least, scrambling to find the will to get up and persist in personal prayer, He reminded me that I needn't be anxious like the disciples in the storm while He slept. He invited me to lie down besides Him in my storm-wracked boat, while He held my hands and listened to me pour out my heart in prayer. There we lay, half asleep- half awake, chatting and celebrating the fact that even when my heart, soul, mind and strength is clearly not what I was so used to thinking it was, even then, especially then: I am HIS!

                                                           ( art by Supriya Balasundaram )

No matter how much I change, no matter what comes against me, no matter what the world says about me or who I used to be: the all-time- most-important-thing I now know deep down in my spirit is that the day I let God shatter the idol I had become to myself, I entered fully into the reality of who I was all along: so completely His!

And,

“I will be a Father to you,
and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

2 Corinthians 6:18

If you can't see the video click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcC1Bp13n_4

P.S: If you'd like to write in and share your heart and prayer requests with me, please do write in to messymiraculousmommy@gmail.com