Authentic Living: Starting the Journey

I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions…they tend to be a little too stress-inducing for me and just remind me of my fear of failure, especially since every resolution has typically been broken by January 5^th anyways. What I do like though, are New Year’s goals. Reframing them as goals reminds me that it is an ongoing process – not something to be maintained and achieved within the next 365 days, but rather a process, and a non-linear one at that, toward a more ideal way of living.

Early in January this year, I was contemplating recent events and realized that in the rush of life and while I was in grad school/survival mode, I had come to a place where I didn’t recognize myself or the person I had become. It was at that point that I asked God to show me what an authentic life looked like. I was tired of living in a space in which I felt so disconnected from myself and what was important to me.

Surprise, surprise…praying for an authentic life is like praying for patience. It seems like a harmless prayer, but what we forget is that God doesn’t just give us patience…he teaches it to us. In the same way, God just didn’t show up one day and say, “Here you go, Cait…here’s an authentic life.” (Which, by the way, could have been nice, haha.) Instead, every day this year has been a challenge to me to dig deep, ask the difficult questions of myself, and be willing to be wholly vulnerable at times. As painful as this process has been though, I can say that, even before this year is over, I have, without a doubt, become a more authentic version of myself in every area of my life. Whether in my faith, my relationships, or my work, God has been rooting out the old, the toxic, and the life-draining and has been filling it with the new, the healing, and the life-giving.

As painful as this year has been at times, I wouldn’t trade it for anything…I am so thankful for this journey, for what I’ve learned, and for who I’ve become. This search for authenticity is, in part, how this blog started, and I’m looking forward to sharing more about this journey toward authentic living in the next few blog posts.

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that 

self may prove to be.”   ~ May Sarton