Someone Else

Have you ever had one of those days where you just wished that you were somebody else?  I have.  I’ve actually had a week of desiring to be someone else.  This week I wished that I were prettier, desirable, less of a tomboy, and a whole lot less buddy buddy with guys.  Although my friends tried to point out my worth to me, and they reminded me that, in the words of my mother “beauty is only skin deep, and some people ought to be skinned” I still wished I was anyone but Cassandra Joy Lauer.

I guess that is one way to feel when God is testing you with fire.  I faced two trials this week, and I didn’t do so hot in either one of them.  This weekend, I lost a best friend, and if I had kept my act up, I have a feeling that I would have lost a second one.  I was so self-absorbed.  I was hurting.  And multiple times I would look myself in a mirror and say over and over again “I hate you.”  I would whisper it to myself, but I would also scream it, making sure that I believed those words.  I hated myself for the things that I had done, and the things I had to do.

But today, today I realized something.  I was in the pool with my brothers, and I was just thinking this week over.  I thought my whole life over, actually.  I started by thinking, what if I had taken ballet instead of karate as a kid.  Then maybe I’d be graceful and peaceful, maybe I’d have a thinner body, instead of that of a basketball player’s.  Like that even matters, but in the course of wanting to be someone else, in the course of wishing that I were prettier and desirable, it does.  I thought, maybe then I would dress nicer, and maybe I’d not be so buddy buddy with guys, and instead get along better with females.  Then maybe I would be more desirable.  I thought about how when I get home from vacation, I could start actually wearing makeup again, like every other girl.  I thought about dressing fancier than just shorts and a tee shirt.  You see, in the midst of my trials, I started thinking that the only way I would ever be loved was if I looked like a model, or at least like the average young adult, and that was a lie from the devil.  I am very much loved, and if I started dressing and acting like the rest of the world, then Cassandra Lauer would disappear.  I would just be one among the millions.  And if someone loves you for being just like the rest of the world, or at least for being how society says we should look, then what is love?  Love would just be artificial and fake.  Love would not exist.  It would just be flattery, and to be frank, it would be boring.  If one is just like the rest of the world, then there is nothing special about the person you love.  Nothing that makes them unique.  And so being like the typical female, is not the magical formula to finding true, lasting love.  Being yourself is.

So while I was thinking about this, I can to the conclusion that if I were to follow the world’s standards of what is pretty, and if I were to change myself to be that kind of person, then I would not be equip to do what God has called me to do.  I would never be ready to open up a Christian theater for inner city kids.  I would never be ready to be a wife and a mother either, because I would be too focused on my appearance and would miss my opportunities.  God has placed you on this earth for a special purpose.  Don’t miss it by listening to the world and following their standards instead of listening to God and following His standards.