What kind of father and husband do I want to be? A legitimate one.

What kind am I?

I am caring and compassionate. I do my best to understand perspectives outside my own. I am 100% committed to growing my relationship with my wife and son, and any future children we have. I treat them as I would like to be treated, knowing they are individuals. I treat them knowing that they are every bit as desperate for love and understanding as I am. I endeavour to sacrifice myself and hold back the bite of selfishness. I attempt to make choices that build our family. I try to starve anything that could compromise my connectivity with my wife or my child/children. I want to fight for good, against the bad, until the end of my story.

Why?

Because: It is the me I want to be. Because God has lead me to understand the impact a dad and husband can have on his family. It’s not all about me. It’s about truth.

What kind of person am I? What kind of person do I know I am?

Sometimes I’m lazy when it really matters. I let my passion stagnate under the excuse of time constraints. I cheat on life; not really living for the things that are real and significant. I don’t eating well and feel like my weight isn’t in a healthy place. I feel like I’m fighting myself and my sins every single day. I feel like I’m failing to succeed. And I feel like all the ‘you need tos’ aren’t helping. I feel like I only have so many resources with only a fraction left to be free in who I am, alone with myself.

Why?

Because: I have wilfully dug myself a hole. I was raised with respect for a system where money and pleasure were all that mattered instead of respecting myself and the heart I was breaking. I filled my life with junk and buried myself with lies. True impacts weren’t measured against pain because pleasure numbed that pain. The lies cut clean and ran deep through my identity. Realities were ignored for speedy self-medication. Consequences became irrelevant. Lies became truth. I tasted sin from an early age and it dug a home in my soul.

In truth, I understand the important things; the passion, the relationship, the faith, and the fighting of the good fight –  even though they may take a lifetime to mature to their fullest. Yet my own knowledge – that I am rotting at my core – can just about wipe out all hope.

Fighting ourselves is the hardest battle we will ever have to face because it can last a lifetime.

When I breathe my last breath, God will let me see myself and the things to which I dedicated my life. It’s not like I don’t already know! When I’m dead and gone no one else will really know who I was. They will only see what I fought to become.

I’m not fake – at least not anymore. But knowing this hasn’t stopped the darkness that I have allowed the devil to grow in me. Knowing God wants, and has, all the goodness I can handle laid out for me already doesn’t stop the selfishness, pride, greed, or lust I nurtured long before I knew Him. I still make choices that benefit nothing but my own selfish thirst for happiness

I am still fighting, trying to let God grow good in me.

What kind of Christian do I want to be? And what kind of Christian am I?

The truth of the matter, being a Christian and believing in God’s personal intervention through His birth life and death in Jesus, doesn’t automatically give freedom from addiction and the sting of suffering. Being a Christian doesn’t automatically make everything ok, it just doesn’t.

Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t necessarily give you freedom from the stuff life, but it does set you free from its eternal power over you. As Paul writes, “The law of the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death”. (Romans 8:2)

I guess I want to be a follower of Jesus that keeps on fighting the God fight. The guy that, though he may fall down every single day, gets back up one more time – every single day.

What kind of Christian do I want to be? I want to be the kind of Christian who is honest about who he is, to himself and others. I what to be that Christian who aligns his words, actions, and thoughts after a single identity. I want to be the kind of Christian that has only one face, the kind that can talk about Jesus as He is and always will be.

What kind of Christian am I?

I’m me. I’m just me. I’m a liar because I think I can get away with it. I’m scared because the world is untrustworthy. I am a creature of comfort because the world is unsafe. I am trusting because the world needs it more than fear. I go along to church every week, but don’t stay for chitchat, because there are 100 reasons why I need to go. I will treat everyone as equal, as best I can. I want people to care about and ignore the fear that holds them all back. I know my life has meaning; it both scares and pushes me at the same time.

I trust, and will always believe in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They are the reasons for all the good things in my life: the strength behind the battles and the courage I have needed to accept and see things from which I could have stayed blind. My actions may not manifest in the same way as others, but I know why I am. I know what defines me. Jesus will always define me. Even when I fall down, He will always be that best friend that I can depend on when I’m feeling worthless and defeated by my darkness.

I don’t have to prove it anymore. Well, not like I used to. God knows. God already knew I was going to stumble over myself. God knows everything about me. He always did. And He wants me in his family anyway.

Who am I? The two things I know for sure?

I am Broken. And, in Jesus, I am made new.