Posture

Learning to live a new way is like learning to walk around with new posture. It hurts. I have lived 25 years of my life slouching. Shoulders slumped and chest concaved... but I've been learning to walk with my head high, my chest out and my shoulders back. It feels good, but walking with new posture is painful too. I feel more erect and alert, but my back hurts, my neck cracks and my abs feel like i've done 40 crunches.

Just like my old posture, the "self" I thought was me dies hard. It hurts to live out of who I really am. It's unfamiliar and awkward. It's painful to give up the ways of relating and living life that have become so apart of who I am. But I'm finding that there is another me. There is a true me that is beginning to shine forth. Just like good posture, it feels good to live out of who I truly am, but it's painful too. No wonder Jesus' statements about following him seem so paradoxical. "you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me?... He who loses his life will find it?" What does that mean?

I think Jesus just means that to "die" is to give up everything you are not! To lose the life you thought was life is the only way to find the life that is hidden behind it. So that's my journey, to lose all the parts of myself that keep me from who I truly am. Saying "No" is painful, cause it forces me to reject a way of living that has worked for me. It takes time to reject the old ways of relating, but it feels so good when I live out of who I really am. New posture is worth the pain.