Who Are You Choosing To Be?

I was on the phone last night with a good friend who, like me, is at the edge of divorce — a divorce he doesn’t want, but now seems imminent. In my circle of friends, I’m sort of known as “The Spiritual Guy” (wonder how THAT happened). So at the beginning of the phone call, he said point blank: “I need a pick me up, something positive.”

We complained together, disappointed over how things should have been different, yadda, yadda, yadda. I’m not out to minimize what he’s feeling or what I’m going through . . . contrary to popular belief, men can and do need to vent their feelings. But at a certain point, a man wants to be able to take action. It’s like, “Enough of the complaining. What can I DO about this?”

Thus I posed him this question: “Who do you want to be in relationship to this situation?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he replied.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned during the past year, it’s that we can’t control what life throws at us. All we can control is who we’re being in relationship to it. I didn’t want a divorce. I didn’t want to be an absentee father to my two-year-old daughter. But things happened and here I am. Even now, I may have some influence on how it all shakes out, but no actual control.

“So instead of focusing on what I can’t control (and getting frustrated by it), I choose to focus on what I CAN control. And that lies in the question: ‘Who do I want to be?’ Enough has happened in the past year for me to park my soul in a thicket of bitterness, anger and rage. But that’s not who I want to be. It’s certainly not the example I want to set for my daughter.

“I don’t want to be angry and distant all the time. More than ever, I want to apply the teachings of my friend Jesus — I want to be the kind of man who meets the day with love and kindness.”

“I don’t want to live in fear and dread of what may happen weeks, months or years from now. That’s not what Jesus (or countless other great spiritual teachers) have taught us. I want to live in the moment — to be grateful for THIS day, for the air I breathe, for the time I have to spend with those I love. I want to use my life TODAY to try to add something to the fabric of humanity.”

“I follow you,” my friend said.

“Now here’s the thing about that: I don’t even have any control over how others will perceive me, what the fruit of my efforts will be. As hard as I tried to make my marriage work, it still exploded in my face. There’s no guarantee that if you stick by your principles, your standards, that you’ll end up with your ideal life.

“And that’s when WHO YOU’RE CHOOSING TO BE has to be reward enough itself. The concept is completely detached from what’s going on in the physical world. For me, it boils down to this: At the end of the day, was I loving to the people that I met? Did I work on the things that are important to me?”

We prayed together. We prayed for our estranged spouses and our children. We prayed for peace, and that God would guide our thoughts and actions. We thanked God for being the air we breathe, all the breaths we’d exhaled and forgotten about, not taking any of it for granted. I wished him good night. And, of course, I kept thinking.

As inspired as I am about A Message From God, I don’t know how it’s going to grow. I don’t know what impact it will have (or has had) on those who have read it. But the biggest part of what motivates me to work on this is simply this: I feel like I’m fulfilling a task I’ve been given.

I like being the guy who applies Jesus’ teaching: “Love your enemies and pray for them who persecute you.” I like being the guy who my friends call upon for an inspired word. I like being able to bask in the simple joy of my daughter’s love (like making cinnamon rolls together), despite the difficult circumstances around us.

When I go to bed at night, I want to be able to say that I did what God put on my heart to do. If I don’t live to see another day, I want to be able to rest saying that when it came to doing what I feel God asked me to do, I went for it. That’s all I’ve got.

And that’s more than enough.