Who am I? I don't know.

Quoted straight from Zoolander! As he looks into his reflection in a puddle on the street he asks himself, "Who am I?" with a quick response from his reflection "I don't know."

I've always found it pretty funny, and even funnier now as I approach myself with the same question. I've thought I knew who I was, what I wanted, and where I was going. But, as I review my life I find that I don't know who I am, what I want, nor where I'm going. How can this be funny you ask? It's funny (to me anyway) that I used to pretend that I did! Even funnier, I'm ok with it! Rather than start worrying about it about and try to be something I'm not, I'd rather just develop into who I am and was made to be.

I've been rather frustrated with church and myself recently because of my inability to be myself because I've created this certain persona of "church guy" and I feel that everyone expects that. Maybe my suspicion is wrong of peoples expectations of me, I don't know. But, I do know that when I really tell people how I feel when they ask "How are you?", most are taken aback by my honesty and not quite sure what to do with it. I also feel like this problem isn't isolated to me. I feel like sometimes (not all of the time, but many times) we christians try to make ourselves into this person who has no problems and everything in life is great. The problem is that when we do that, we are in affect killing authentic realtionships within the church because there are hardly any real people within church. I think also that we can see that stark contrast between the people who are hiding and those who are being real. Think about it. Those people are inviting, just by their personality, because they seem to really understand what it is to live and how to go through life as such. On the other hand there are those of us that seem cold and disconnected even when the words that we say would be the same as the other type. It's almost something of experiential value...that is that it seems those people have really experienced life. That's how it seems to me anyway.

Well, I say all this to basically say, I'm learning who I am and what I want in life...and I'm going to do my best to stray away from making myself something else or hiding from what I'm realyl experiencing in life.

I'd love to hear your comments on this even if you disagree. Thanks for reading!

Ryan

Long time, no post

Well, so much for the whole Venezuela posting thing.... that didn't work out. In order to keep it short, Venezuela was good.

I've been back for a few months now, and I'm learning more about myself, the world, and the Lord more than ever. I've been questioning the way I did a lot of things and the way I lived before I left for my study abroad, and since I've experienced the whole spectrum of the rainbow in emotions and thoughts. With those, however, I've also experienced perseverance to grow and let myself become who I was created to be. Anyway, I've decided to make this an outlet for my journey of life. I hope that it will maybe be of help to anyone else that is going through life finding themselves and maybe even that it draws advice and suggestions from friends and family. I hope you enjoy what I'm calling "The Life of Ryan". Thanks for stopping by!

Ryan