Who Am I?               

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Who am I?  I expect that many reach the point in their lives when they ask those three words.  Perhaps there are those who consider such introspective quests as foolish.  And there may be some just too busy to take the time.

I have these last years allowed that question to cross my mind from time to time.  It has nothing to do with my genealogy.  I don’t need “Ancestry.com” to verify my genes.  I have volumes that lay out my family tree.  Rather I approach the question with what have I done with the material my forefathers and mothers have given me.

It may be silly, but I think each of us should consider who we have become…what we are…now.  The list of things that I have been, is long.  Son, husband, father, employee, employer, and a thousand other “personal descriptions”.  Surely three score plus years sufficient time to gather such notations. And even now I have several things that I do my best to juggle.  Some of these things others might call titles…I just consider them part of who I am. 

I feel that a person needs to be connected to the world around them.  Not necessarily the great big globe of the world, but their community…their family and friends and others.  Work creates a circle of people, and when one retires that circle can shrink.  Not that mine has.  So I am connected…deeply connected, and partly because it is who I am.

So who am I…really?  I look in the mirror and see a face with a few more wrinkles, hair that has changed color and I ask myself.  Uncertain that I am qualified to answer and wonder who might be.  That thought does not hang in the air long for I understand that only GOD knows the compete answer.  It should be enough…but it isn’t.  No, if I believe I am on the road toward perfection, I need to be continually improving.  Ouch!

GOD will accept me as I am…but who am I?  I am but a man trying my best to do my best…and failing…often.  Perfection….Hmmm… If I am truly on that road then perfection is beyond the horizon or at least around many bends far out of sight.  For I am just human, striving for things, that are at this point, out of my reach, but knowing I need to reach anyway.

I care.  I care about a great many things.  Some might say I care too much.  It is not a point I will argue.  Caring has its price, at time that price is high, but it has its rewards as well.  Surely I am disappointed…regularly.  Surely loss strikes me as hard as others.  But I cannot imagine going through life and NOT caring.  You see it is part of who I am.  Blended within that caring is a faith that promotes…caring.  For GOD loved the world….  Should I not try to love as well?

So I find myself in a mixed up world looking for answers, and knowing that world does not understand me…really.  That within the who I am, I know a few answers…a few important answers.  Among them is, that there is a purpose even for someone like me.  That GOD placed me here for a reason…a reason I may be unable to fathom at this time, but a reason all the same.  Knowing these things and just a basic knowledge of my own personality helps me shape the direction I push myself.  I may think I am creating the person John V. is becoming, but I know better.  For I understand that I am the clay in the artist’s hand, being formed by my GOD into who I am.

(626 Words)         6-20-2017