Do You Feel Like You Lost Yourself Last Year?

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I lost myself last year. It happened in painful bits, like a statue carved by a sculptor, every inch of my being hammered and chiseled. Much like a sculptor’s final product, I became stone, but unlike an artistic masterpiece, I was aware of the entire process, my flesh feeling it all, knowing I would be nothing but cracked rubble when all was said and done. 

I didn’t have time to attend therapy regularly, nor could I focus on putting out one relational fire before another emerged. It was hard to stay spiritually afloat, too, as a life group leader who felt the beautiful but weighty pressure of tending to everyone else. And soaking in Sunday sermons? That was a little hard when I always ended up in the nursery with my son. 

Thus, I grew cold, surveying my decaying idea of life, people, and the purpose of it all. My perception of God’s goodness felt much like a Sunday school reply, a forced faith devoid of enthusiasm. 

As the year wore on, many in my village lied.

Some were, and remain, lukewarm.

Others simply never showed. 

Amid it all, I felt the physical loss of people, surrendering them to worms and dirt and an hourglass that ran out of sand. I lost one person who never received an hourglass. 

Each of Us Loses Something

I grieved. Oh, how I grieved and still grieve the habitual, perpetual loss of people. It’s taken over thirty years, but I’ve realized this isn’t a season. This is life. I can’t control others, can’t force them to show up the way I do. I can’t save them, either. I can’t force their lungs to breathe and their hearts to beat. 

Worse still, as a person, I, too, fail others. I make selfish decisions. I lose myself in destructive ways. I am a contributing factor in this seven-billion-hurting-people crisis. 

Perhaps that’s why we all lose ourselves at one point, or many points, in life. We are cohesively losing and grieving and destroying and self-shaming and healing. 

We are never left the same as we were the day before, even in the boring seasons. We are constantly impacted, challenged, and changed. We are always becoming something, even if our becoming is at the expense of empty hands and hearts. I have to remind myself that this is the oddly redeeming part of losing myself, that as pieces of me die and disappear, I can become something more. 

If your headspace is as heavy as mine, and you feel that uneasy weight of loneliness and loss, I want to share two thoughts that have become my lifeblood over the past year:

1. Self-Awareness Can Save You from Letdowns

Self-awareness sounds like a New Age concept, but it’s actually a powerful tool that allows you to recognize and shed your pride. It’s a refining choice to identify who you are at your core and admit how selfishly you can operate. This understanding is a pruning process that softens your spirit so you can empathize, forgive, and, if needed, walk away. 

Last year revealed how easily I place impossible expectations on people. I want them to function in a way that best suits me, and when they don’t meet my standard, I fume. I grow bitter. I isolate. I blame them for the disappointment I can’t push past. My heartache becomes who I am, and so my identity is lost to cold, hard pain. 

The truth is that each person I know and love struggles with something, and they will fail me in one way or another, intentionally or not. (Just as I will fail each of them.) I can’t expect anything from imperfect people but imperfection. And though some pains this year felt like personal attacks, and were, I’ve realized that this pain serves to shift my perception. It’s my way of knowing what to expect from certain individuals, so I don’t lose myself to a letdown I can’t recover from. 

Thus, I can protect my heart and who I am by accepting that everyone is flawed. I can recognize who a person has proven themselves to be, all without the pressure to bend their thinking or fix how they treat me. In other words, I don’t have to lose myself to the byproduct of people’s brokenness (mine included). 

2. Some Lost Things Aren’t Truly Lost, But Transformed

Not all things that we have lost are truly gone. Rather, they are moved or withheld for the better.

I consider the romantic relationship I lost after years of giving it my best. I fought for it, refused to let it go, and lost my self-worth in the process. Thus, when that relationship finally ended, when I couldn’t force him to be honest or stay, losing him meant finding my new, God-centered sense of value. 

I consider the baby I only carried for six weeks, the one my husband and I had already pictured as a girl and given a name. I think of the celebratory breakfast our little family devoured as we were overwhelmed with excitement for her. Then I consider the shortly followed loss, my body saying it couldn’t carry and grow her as it should. 

When I think of the moments I can’t share with her here, I can’t help but think of the unshakeable peace I have as her mom, knowing she is forever safe. She will never know stubbed toes, stomach bugs, or scary doctor’s appointments. She’ll never know betrayal or heartache. 

I lost her, but what I found is the most beautiful promise that she will never know loss. She went straight from the safety of my womb, where she was so loved and adored, to the shielding arms of the Father who made her tiny being and called her good. 

What more could I want for her than that? 

Then, I consider how I lost myself this year, weighed down by so many circumstances and losses that I told my husband, “I’m not suicidal, but I don’t want to do this anymore.” 

As a new year beckons me to reflect on the last twelve months, I want to pity myself for all the heartache, loss, and identity issues, but a piece of me thinks, maybe that was the point. Maybe you aren’t meant to be who you were last year. Maybe you aren’t meant to find and reclaim the old you. Maybe, just maybe, God’s unchanging character is desperately determined to transform you for good. 

A Reconciling Thought

If you’re panicked about losing yourself, or feeling depressed because of it, may I encourage you to consider that perhaps it’s time to leave that person behind, even if he or she was happy, to become someone more? 

This will take patience as you pursue the heart of God. This will take a faith that won’t feel anything at times, as you question circumstances that make no sense. This will take hope that rests on nothing but the resurrection of Jesus. 

This will take everything you are, battered, broken, and lost, but it’ll be worth it:

“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” - 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (NIV)

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Tiziana Nanni 

Peyton Garland is an author, editor, and boy mama who lives in the beautiful foothills of East Tennessee. Subscribe to her blog Uncured+Okay for more encouragement.