Learning stillness

Funny how sometimes life has to come to a crashing halt in order for you to gaze around for a second and understand what really has come to pass. My life has taken a course that propels it in a dizzying speed around knowledge, relationships, time and words that seek to mold me into what the world hopes I shall someday become. In the midst of this madness I find myself desperately holding on to the only thing that is constant in my life. I have learned that identity does not lie in the relationships you have, in what institutions say you are... it does not lie in education, outwards appearance, nor in experience. Being at university brought me to a place where I had to consider what really mattered in my life. Whether everything I said I was was really my identity or whether I was only a product of my environment and therefore susceptible to change. Would I give up the essence of my being to become another? Did I really believe in everything I stood for or was it just something I adopted because everyone around me felt the same? So now I was on my own faced with the terrifying thought that my life's devotion from the time I was a child to now could all have been blindly accepted. Was this professed love of the One who knew me fully and who I thought I knew just dogma? The question brought me to my knees for I came to realise that I could lose all I stood for in one night. I could go out, leave behind my innocence, my purity, my values and throw them into the dark and spit in the face of Jesus. The very thought of that hurt me more than anything. How could I ever deny the One who loved me first? A friend sat across from me. We were having dinner. Catching up after being apart for a year. Friends in High School, now living two very different lives. He says: " I don't understand. You're 19 and you've given your life completely to something/someone you've never seen?" I'd never thought of it that way. The answer in the end was yes. This is who I am. My identity lies in the man Christ Jesus. No one could ever compare to Him. But all the rest I am not sure about. The theology, the dogma, the cliché phrases have been stripped away in one year. What I'm left with is the fundamentals of a cross, innocent blood shed and a life not worthy of such sacrifice yet given a gift that was more precious than anything this life could ever offer. So we're starting from scratch.