The Pains of Being a Rule Breaker

Growing up I followed the crowd, I followed the rules, I wanted to be

Just
Like
Everyone
Else.

Why? Because the majority of the population, in my opinion, liked and was most comfortable with those who were followers of the norm, or were rule keepers...

And I just wanted to be liked. I didn't know how else to be liked than to do what I was told. Everyone likes a good person who doesn't question things...at least that was what I learned from a very young age; that those I love were the happiest with me when I did what I was told.

I have found that for the most part that the rules that were taught to me to live by are rules that I still follow. I have found most happiness and freedom within these guidelines.

But I have found that some rules that I've ignorantly given myself from a young age, have been doing no benefit to me and if anything, have hindered me from becoming the person that I feel I've pushed aside and belittled for so long. And all this conditioning I've placed upon myself still haunts me today. While they haunt me less, they still tug and make their presence known when I go against them. Even if going against them is right.

But as I've searched these past several years to know what is best for me, what is the best person that God would have be, and trusting that God has my heart and I would not go wrong following it, I've settled myself on this:

I no longer want to follow the norm, and their rules.

Something happened today that sparked this blog post. Something that tugged at my gut just so that I knew I couldn't sit back and not give my two cents.

I stumbled upon a website. A website full of those who "know it all", who believe that if I follow what they know, that I would be happier and see better results in my life.

My mind trailed back to the past year or so and I realized that I was doing just about nothing that this website claims is a "sure-fire win" to having the end goal that they assume that I would want to have.

But in that moment where my mind looked at all the "wrong" I've done, for the slightest fraction of a second I felt regret that I had done those things, I suddenly wondered if there was a way I could go back and fix my "faults" to which I then told myself to take good mental notes as to what is on this website so that I may follow it, to the letter, in the future.

Once that split second ended, I came back to reality and looked over the website again and shook my head.

My mind retorted, "I didn't come this far in life to conform, again, to what a few people think I should do in order to succeed. I've have done pretty darn good these past few years, so why change that?"

But what gets me is how much I still allow these pointless "rules" to have me second-guessing everything that I've become. To have me feeling like that little Ladee who is now in trouble for not knowing better and shunned into her room until the lesson has been forever burned into the memory so it won't happen again.

I've often wondered what I could do to no longer feel like my differences are bad. Many times I sit among a group of women and know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I am not like any of them. And how grateful I am for that. Not because I don't want to be like them, but because I know that I am happiest being me and having embraced my differences. The differences that God gave me so I can be an instrument in His hands. I'm more comfortable in my skin than I've ever been.

And yet, why, if I'm so happy with this person I've become, should I still feel that thread of the past, pulling me back?

I hold the greatest fear of the unknown. I get ill over not knowing when things will happen and how they'll happen. Could this be the old me, the all-familiar, the rule-keeper pulling me back to "safety" because there I know what to expect? But that's just the problem...I don't want the life the old me had, regardless of how well I know it and how predictable it is. Because in that life I am not true to myself.

Thank God that life is lived a day at a time. And that each day we learn a little more, if we allow it.

While I don't know what tomorrow brings, I've found that my tomorrows are better as I look forward to them, with God at my side, than when I have wished for my yesterdays back in attempts to change what one person may believe I'm doing wrong.

"To thine own self be true."