Who I am

It's funny that as I get older, this seems to be the question I am least sure of. "Who am I"?

At 48 years old I have been many things, many persons. A son, sibling, friend, father, husband, ex-husband, husband again, Airman, Blue Collar Worker, Law Officer, coach, teacher, leader, administrator, fireman, Role Model, peacekeeper, student, sinner, criminal, alcoholic & Christian. I am, somewhere in it all, looking for the legacy of my past. Footprints of time that has left indelible marks not only on me, but others that I have touched, or have touched me. I have to admit, I'm not sure if it has mostly been bad or good.

Truly I have been the saint, ready to help others, to let the Holy Spirit work through me as I work with people and their needs. I have also failed, even refusing, in helping others. I have been the sinner, the one who tried to hide from God. Fail in doing what I knew was right. I felt that I was never to get to heaven, so why even try. All my sins, grieving God, and given true test to His Love for me. For He sees something that has yet to be revealed to me.

The way I have chosen to live my life has shaped me, helped me, cured me and cursed me. I seemed to have lived like my paperback heroes. Tough but sensitive, hard drinking, fighting, bending or breaking the rules that I felt got in my way of doing my job, with a conscious for the victim. The results of that life have also extracted its toll on me. As I move forward, the past seems to be revealed to me more and more. As I try and live mentally healthy into the future, I have to deal with my actions and mistakes of the past, many of them dark and not fully surfacing in my conscious mind. I have to not let the pain and guilt of them prevent me from my new travels. I need to realize and correct mistakes, to live as a recovering person. When I say recovering I don't mean just from Alcohol. I mean recovering, to find who I was supposed to be, but got lost somewhere. Close one chapter in my life, so a new one can begin.

I want to take my past, bring it transparently to my future and compare. Am I the good man I believe I am? Did I find that my ethics from youth stood the test of not only time, but abuse? When all is said and done, and I sit in judgment, ashamed of my sins, sins that I could only hide from man but not God. Will Jesus know me and explain to His Father, the Great I Am, that I could have done better, but please take me into his kingdom.