Becoming Acquainted With Myself

I started a journey a few weeks ago, and a part of this journey is simply me trying to be intentional. The word the Lord gave me for 2026 was intentional. In choosing to live that out, I decided to begin a specific treatment.

During the intake process, they asked very deep questions about my background, things that happened in childhood. These questions were very specific, like whether I had ever broken a limb as a child, whether I had been in car wreck, any instances of traumatic events. These were very intricate questions that would require you to have been paying close attention and retaining memories over time in order to answer them well.

But I realized something about myself long ago. Maybe it was due to trauma I have endured, or maybe just a kind of emotional detachment. Either way, I realized that I do not naturally hold on to memories in detail. I am not able to recall them at the snap of a finger without being very intentional about remembering.

For example, when a doctor asks, “How long have you been experiencing this pain?” most of the time my mind has been so focused on moving forward to the next thing that I may have been feeling pain for weeks, yet I only truly notice it when it becomes unbearable. So when I am asked to explain how long something has been happening, I am often unable to answer accurately.

As I went through this treatment, I began to realize just how disconnected from myself I had been. And if you know me, this might not be something you would assume about me. I did not even recognize it until I was placed in a quiet space where I was asked to pay attention to what I was feeling in my body.

In that stillness, I began to feel pain that made me feel like a stranger in my own body. What was most triggering was realizing that this was not new pain. It was pain I was already acquainted with. We just had not exchanged names or numbers because I had never paid attention to it.

That realization made me very emotional, even to the point of tears. Because how can I say that I love everyone else, and even say that I love myself, yet not be acquainted with how my own body feels?

It also made me realize that this is a mirror for many other areas of life. If we are not aware of how we actually feel and who we actually are, we begin to depend on others to define us and tell us how to feel. I am also reminded of something I heard my Pastor say on Sunday “Whoever defines what you are going through defines your destiny.” Being present and aware gives us the ability to be in charge of what defines our lives and by extension our destiny.

So in sharing this, I simply want to bring that to the surface and extend an invitation:

Take time to listen to your body.
Take time to ask who is defining who you are.

Is your identity shaped by true knowing, or by the voices around you? Have you been living what feels like your own life, only to discover it is actually the life others have defined for you?