I . . . AM . . . ME!!! Staring out the window, I let the idea slowly sink into my four-year-old brain. This idea was an incredible revelation. I am ME!!! I have been talking to ME my whole life. That voice in my head is ME. The feeling that flowed through my body felt familiar to this little farm girl: precisely like touching the wire of an electric fence.
“Well, hello ME.”
I am sure everyone comes to that realization at some point in their early lives. The recognition that when we think good thoughts, when we think bad thoughts, all that stuff that comes from inside our heads is coming from the essence of who we are.
Oh, dear!
That awakening did not mean I quickly became the master of my soul. Years would pass as I grew in my understanding of an incredible reality: I am a Me who is very dependent upon the Creator of Me.
Dallas Willard says, “Understanding is the basis of care. What you would take care of you must understand . . .. If you would care for your spiritual core—your heart or your will—you must understand it” (Willard 9).
I am in the process of rereading Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart for probably the fourth time. I need those reminders: The little taps on the shoulder; the below-the-surface digging; the warm encouragement; the reminder that life is more than slogging through this muddy, fallen world.
Will I ever be renovated entirely, I wonder? Probably not. But the promise of someday living closer to what God intended for this “me” that He has created compels me to continue this conversation between the Creator and the Me.