We often ask this question to young children; right now my five year old GRANDson wants to be a tow truck driver.  And often I hear my peers asking this question about themselves or asking it on behalf of their adult children.  Even though I understand, something doesn’t feel right about that.  We (and our adult children) are grown up; we should know what we want to be.  But often the being and the doing gets confused.

I’m a school teacher by training but I haven’t had my own classroom of third graders for over 35 years.  Currently ~ besides being on the staff of The Navigators ~ I’m a consultant (a saleswoman) with The Longaberger Company.  Although those three identities play into what I do today, none of them accurately define my heart’s desire.

Last fall I was struck by Psalm 33:13, 14, and 15, “The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.”

“… he who fashions the hearts … observes all their deeds.”   The questions came quickly:  Are my deeds in line with the heart God fashioned in me?  Am I living out of who God created me to be?  What is dying in me?  What is coming alive?  Do I like who I’m becoming?  Does God like how I am living out who He created me to be?

As I pondered the Scripture and my questions, that morning I drove a stake into the ground and this blog was born.  I knew I wanted to live out who God created me to be and help other women to live out who God created them to be too.  This was one way to do that.

Author John Eldridge said in his book, The Sacred Romance, “There is no escaping your identity.  You will not live beyond how you see yourself, not for long”.   For many years even though I knew what I wanted to do, my picture of myself held me back from being that.  As God transformed me and my picture, I was set free to know the heart God gave me and to begin to live out of it.  The key for me was I needed God’s picture of me first, then I could confidently live out of who He fashioned me to be.  The being came before the doing.  The doing naturally follows the being.

“…the church of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you to make the word of God fully known,”
Colossians 1:24 and 25