The evolution of me
By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever felt like you had to be someone you’re not? It’s an uncomfortable, awkward feeling, isn’t it? You feel almost like a fraud.
In my youth, it seemed like I was constantly reinventing myself. Part of this was just simply trying to figure out who I was. Teenage years are often a crash course in finding one’s identity. Some of it probably had to do with the fact that my family moved around a lot, and not only was I shy and insecure, but I also desperately wanted people to like me. So I would mold myself, reinvent myself, morph and evolve, as I tried to figure out who I was and where I fit in the world. It was like being a chameleon, constantly changing colors to suit my environment.
Eventually I got to know myself along the way and the dust settled, revealing the real me.
But it took a lot of work and a lot of mistakes to get there. It would have been far simpler for me to cling to my true identity, daughter of the king, than to constantly bend and shift with the ways of the world and icky high school culture. But I didn’t know that was my identity back then. Even though I was raised in the church, that was one truth I hadn’t been taught.
As the mom of four teens, and as a mentor of 10 girls going through confirmation class at my church, I get to hear a lot these days about fitting in and how painful it is when you feel like that proverbial square peg trying to cram into a round hole. I want to shout, “Don’t worry! You’ll get there! Everything will be just fine—relax. In 10 years you’re going to laugh when you look back at all this.” But it doesn’t ever do any good. It certainly didn’t do me any good when I heard well-meaning adults say that when I was their age.
Sometimes you just have to go through things to understand.
But what I’d really love to tell my younger self all these years later isn’t that at all. It’s a bit of a lie, isn’t it? (Except for the looking back and laughing part.) The truth is that sometimes people aren’t going to like me. And guess what? They didn’t all like Jesus, either.
Sometimes I imagine Jesus was this awesome, loving, likable guy who was probably really fun to hang around with, someone who exuded warmth and welcomed everyone. But Jesus didn’t have friendship and “getting along” as His mission. His mission was to point people to the father.
And when He did that, sometimes He made people angry. Sometimes they found His words offensive and arrogant. I’m sure He didn’t make many friends the day He got angry, turned over all those tables in the temple, and said people shouldn’t be selling their stuff there (Mark 11:15-18). But that’s what He needed to do—that’s what God wanted Him to do.
That’s what I really wish I could’ve told my younger self—peace and contentment are not about getting people to like you. They’re about trying to be the person God created you to be, trying to honor the true and pure soul within you pointing to the Father and helping other people know Him as well.
All the other stuff we go through in life really boils down to that. You start to like yourself along the way when you find you are living in alignment with God, when you are true to that Real Self deep within.
It’s a harsh truth, isn’t it? But Jesus is clear. He doesn’t mince words when He tells us in John 15:19, “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (ESV).
I think that might have been what Paul had on his mind when he wrote that we should not be conformed to this world (Romans 12:2). Life isn’t about that nonsense—it’s about helping to bring about God’s Kingdom here on earth, prioritizing God over everything, and introducing everyone we can to Him and His way.
That’s the real evolution of me: not that I stopped switching colors like a chameleon to suit my environment but that I started switching toward God’s way.
And I pray I keep evolving in that direction forevermore.
How about you: Is something in this post speaking to you today? Are you morphing to suit the world like a chameleon? Or are the world’s enticing colors drawing your attention from what’s most important?
Comment below or email. I’d love to hear from you.
