I am what I am, and that's all that I am.

       I am

• an emotional thinker
• organized
• oblivious
• selfish
• rule-follower
• insecure
• selfish
• empathetic
• prideful
• hard-worker
• dependent
• a leader when no one else will be
• easily manipulated
• non-judgmental
• open-minded, or trying to be
• immature
• a reacter 
• a worrier
• uptight
• detail-oriented
• passionate
• spoiled
• awkward
• a lover

I think because I'm told to think, I do because I'm told to do, I love because I'm told to love, I am because I'm told to be. 


Well that's all about to change...
I don't know myself. My whole life I've let people tell me who I am rather than figuring it out for myself. Now, I have to start from scratch and it may just take me 19 more years to figure it out. 


I'm not perfect. I'm flawed. Very flawed. I have so many flaws I don't even know where to begin on fixing them. The first step is admitting it, right? 


According to Wikipedia, on the "Twelve-step program for Alcoholics Anonymous":

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Of course, I'm not an alcoholic. But I am addicted to something else: myself. I'm addicted to my flaws. 


If I want to change, I have to break this addiction, I must deny my deadly human nature and follow the only one who can satisfy all my deepest desires.

Luke 9:23 "Then He said to them all, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.'"

I must be capable of functioning and flourishing with and through these qualities before they could ever complement or bless anyone else.