The REAL You

Who are you?

Do you really know?

It’s a scary question to most people.

With social media, people can easily represent the person they want others to see.

What does your Instagram or Facebook page say about you?  But is that the REAL you?

Facing ourselves is scary.

What about the people around you?  Can you really be yourself around them?

I will admit that there are many days that I don’t like the real me. There are some days it’s just not easy being me. I’m not one who has ever been overly confident but in recent years I have learned to be content with myself. The real me.

Now I am far from perfect but I recognize who I really am and know my place.

I am never the attention-seeker nor the life of the party.  I would never be comfortable with that position. I am usually the quiet one and will participate when I find my spots but mostly I blend into the background. I’m okay with that role more now than I used to be. I’m usually not given much of a thought but I have become okay with that.

The key to being the real you is to be honest with yourself about you.

For a majority of my life I didn’t like who I was. I had a very low self-esteem and was very sensitive to what people thought of me. My life was ruled by doing things so people would not make fun of me. It was a very frustrating existence for a long time. I wasted so many years consumed with this.

So what changed me?

I had to change my thinking and I also changed my life. Several years ago I made a drastic change and I met someone who made me a better person. I finally found someone who liked the real me. I found confidence in that and my life changed from that day forward.

You have to stop trying to please people. That is the number one thing to liking who you are. When I was going through my “change” I watched a new Robin Hood movie and in the movie Robin Hood’s father asked his son “are you ready to be who you are?”

We have to ask that question and then make the commitment to be who we are and not what others want us to be. My life had been driven by a life where I spent so much time trying to please everyone else yet I was the one who was miserable because I wasn’t pleasing me. I know that sounds selfish but at some point you need to put yourself first otherwise you will just stuff all of the expectations down inside and live a miserable life.

I still have some moments when I find myself sliding back into those old thoughts and feelings. I have learned to not stay there and shake away that feeling. I’m not going back there. Never again.

The most important thing I have learned is to just be the best version of you that you can be. Don’t compete with others. Just be who you are. Don’t let others dictate who you are.

With about 99% of the friends and family in my life, I have always had to be the one who kept the relationship going. I always have to initiate the communication. I am always the one who has to make the effort. I have concluded that I don’t HAVE to do that. If someone wants to be in your life they will. I no longer let that inequity affect who I am. You are only important many people when they need something. It’s time to just admit the painful truth and accept it for what it is. Just take what you get. Don’t take offense to things you can’t control.

I am far from perfect. I still get moody and have days when I simply don’t get it right. Those days will happen. I lose my temper and say things I shouldn’t but I don’t let the bad moments define me.

Life is too short to live frustrated that you can’t be yourself.

Find yourself.
Be yourself.
Love yourself…the REAL you!

The Changes of Life

Life changes you.

We all walk the pathway of our lives wherever it leads us.

Pain changes us.
Loss changes us.
People change us.

Our choices change us. There are times we are forced to go into a direction we hadn’t intended to go.

I remember the times when I would attend a family reunion after many years and someone would say how they loved me but I was quick to remind them that they don’t really know me. I wasn't the same Milton they knew as a child. Too many years had passed. I was not the same person they remembered.

I’m not the same person I was in high school either. Our yearbook photo freezes us in time. I don’t recognize the naive younger version of myself.

I’m not even the same person I was just 15 years ago.

I would like to tell you that I have always made the right decision in the choices I have made but I haven’t. No one can truly say that because we can't always know what is ahead of us. We all just do the best that we can. We can only make choices based on the information we know. We can’t know what we don’t know.

I used to stress out about making the absolute perfect decision and worried about make the wrong one until I realized that even if I make the wrong decision, God will work it out and get us where we need to be. He said that He works ALL things together for good. Sometimes it doesn't seem good but I have learned that many, many times we don't see it until we are able to look back. As humans, we can only make the best decision we can based upon what we know. We can let ourselves be tormented about what ifs.

If we think that in our present situation that we are in it due to the result of a wrong choice what do we do?

We make the best of it until we can change it.

We all have endured pain and sometimes we have caused it. We are not perfect.

I wish I could go back and visit the younger me and tell him what was coming. Chances are that he wouldn’t believe me. I can hardly believe it now.

Life changes us whether we want it to or not. We can’t have it all figured out. We don’t have the luxury of seeing the big picture. We can only see what is in front of us. Just take one step at a time and one day at a time.

What If I Had Been a Father?

Tomorrow is Father’s Day.

I am not a father (directly) myself and my own father passed away in 2018.

I have never been a father. Timing and life circumstances passed me by. Several years ago, I became a stepfather and entered the lives of three children who were already adults, so I have become an extra person in their lives. They have a father, but I am glad I have been involved in their lives in some way.

Would I have been a good father if it had worked out?

I guess I will never know for sure.

I hope that I would have been a softer version of my own father. He was strict and distant. He mellowed out in later years, and I think we understood each other better during his final weeks.

My dad and I did have our father-son moments. We threw the baseball around, shot hoops and went to high school football games. I credit him the reason I got so involved in following Georgia High School football. I think I would have taken interest in my own child’s interests. I think that’s the kind of father I would have been.

Would I have been a patient father? I hope so.

Could I have been a positive male figure in a child’s life? I would have done my best to be one.

I would most definitely have stressed about money and providing for them.

I would have been proud of my child and supported them. I wouldn’t have put expectations on them to follow in my footsteps but blaze their own trail and encouraged them in pursuing their own dreams.

My father spent over 40 years as a preacher in a church organization which betrayed him after all of his years and sacrifices for his service. I never attempted to follow in his footsteps to become a preacher, and he was okay with that.

I would hope that if I had been a father that my children would have known without a doubt about my approval. They wouldn't have needed to question it or seek my approval. They would have had it unconditionally.

In my lifetime and in many capacities, I hope I have been a positive father-figure to others in some way.

Although I have not been a father, in recent years I have become a grandparent in lives of our grandchildren. I am known as “dude” and have had quite an experience in this role. I am not a major part of their lives and understandably I take a backseat to their first level grandparents, but I am glad to be an extra person in their lives too whether or not I am given much thought or credit for it.

My life has many strange twists and turns. I never would have expected to be here and in the role I am in today. Am I the perfect example of being a father, stepfather, dude or extra-dad? No, I am not. I don't know how to be a father, I can only be Milton. I try to be the best me that I can be. Some days it's just not good enough. Some days I manage it okay. I still have a lot to learn.

You don't have to be "blood-related" to be a father in someone's life. I may have not been a father in the traditional sense, but I have been honored to be an extra father at this time in my life.