Truth — Blog — Give the Grave Only Bones.

I got my fourth tattoo the other day. It's a tree on the back side of my left arm about an inch or so above my elbow. It's beautiful and simple and exactly what I wanted. It's been so long since I got my last tattoo that when I laid down in the chair and gave the artist reign over my arm I was suddenly reminded of the not so pretty parts of it all..

When you look up tattoo designs and ideas you don't read a lot about the pain. It's not often that you come across the beautiful pictures and creative pieces accompanied by an outlined article about the sting of the instrument and the often not so pretty healing process.

I think social media is often like that. It's a portrait into the beauty, the whole and the healed places of people's lives. It's a snapshot of their joy, insight into their most happy places but very rarely is it a reflection of their pain in the process or the healing that comes before the joy.

I'm definitely guilty of this. In the past I've posted photo after photo of my time traveling and working abroad. I shared with my friends the time I met the Pope and traveled to the Dead sea and to Cuba, without hesitation. What I didn't share was the time I cried myself to sleep from loneliness or all of the priceless and irreplaceable moments I missed being away from home or the experiences that broke my heart and rocked my core.

I follow people on Instagram that seemingly have the perfect life. They seem to be debt and problem free, in perfect relationships and without fail always on cloud 9. A trip through my timeline and feed, I've come to find, would unfortunately portray the same false reality to onlookers.

I think that despite our access to information and timelines and photo feeds we as a social media community are often more disconnected than connected. Disconnected from the vulnerability and freedom that comes from being open about the messiness of life. We're living in a world where we're bombarded with mostly smiles, planned pictures and the perfect snapshots of our friends lives.

I want to see your Sunday morning brunch and your sparkly smiles but I also long to see what your eyes look like after you cry and what it's like to walk through an imperfect moment in your shoes.

I recently wadded in a bit of the messiness of life. At the time I was fully immersed in filth and mud but a glance at the life I shared and promoted online didn't reflect that at all. As a blogger I want my platform to be authenticity. I want the life that I show online to be honest and genuine. Even if I'm not always comfortable sharing every detail of my situation I want to be open about times when I'm swimming with sea turtles and times when I'm barely staying a float.

It's been 10 days since I got my tree tattoo. 10 days worth of soreness and itchy skin. 10 days of excitement over a new piece of body art and annoyance over having to keep it moisturized and out of the sun.

Today, my lovely tree is almost completely healed. The scabbing has ceased and the tree that I was so eager to spend the rest of my life with is almost completely settled into my skin. Life, I think, is kind of like the process of a healing tattoo. It's not always pretty, there's some pain and impatience involved but in the end if you lean in to the process you end up with a work of art.

May we never lose sight of the process and the pain that often comes with it by only focusing on the pretty, on the destination. So here's step one of me saying and trying to implement in my life, that I want to see it all, not just the glitter but all of it

When I sat down this week to start writing about graduates and graduation a lot of ideas popped into my head. I thought about writing something about the importance of always being a student, seeking to learn and grow from every person that you meet. Though an interesting idea, it didn't quite feel right.

Then I considered writing an open letter entitled "dear graduates," with advice and tips and tricks for navigating the world outside of the four walls of school. This idea felt better than the first but the words just didn't flow, a clear indication that I was on the wrong track.

All of that idea tossing and brain storming led me to what I'm writing about today, identity.

I don't know about you but all of my life I've been heavily defined by and tied to titles related to my education. For all of my K-12 years I was the home schooled kid and that was a badge that, once I stopped being ashamed of, I wore proudly. My post secondary track led me to a small all women's liberal art's school and for those four years I was the college student attending a strong all women's college. It was a time in my life that I was so proud of and shared with others quickly.

After finishing college I joined the global education program Up with People and for years it was the first thing I would share about myself when meeting new people. The fact that I got to travel the world performing, volunteering and living with host families made me feel like my life was such an adventure.

Then before I knew it, I wasn't connected to any of those things anymore. I was living in Denver, working in an office and staying in my host family's basement.

My life it seemed, had gone from unique to unique to all of a sudden strikingly average. My identity was so tied to my circumstances and how they made me stand out from a crowd that when my circumstances became seemingly normal I felt like I as well had gone from someone that was special to someone who just blended in with the crowd.

My first few weeks of living in Denver were harder than I imagined they would be. As I began to settle into a routine; wake up, work, workout, sleep, repeat, I also began to settle into a cycle of self doubt and lack of identity.

"Who am I if I'm not the world traveler?" I thought to myself one day as I boarded a plane from Denver to Pennsylvania to visit my family. Whenever I would come home to visit, my dad would always proudly introduce me to his friends as "his daughter, the world traveler," I was terrified at the thought of how boring his new introduction may potentially be.

That weekend when we went to church, I walked into the building with my parents and immediately from across the room one of their friends, with a huge smile on their face, came bounding in our direction. They greeted my parents warmly and then turned my way and said "Is this the daughter that you've been telling us about?" and then wrapped me in a warm bear hug. As I stood there, hugging a stranger I was taken aback by the reality of my identity.

To my parents, regardless of where I was studying, living or traveling I was always first and foremost their daughter.

It's so easy for us to tie our identity and our worth to the things that we do and the circles that we run in. Do you find yourself doing that? Introducing yourself and first mentioning where you work as if our jobs are able to give people an all encompassing snapshot of who we really are. As if the fact that you're loving, kind and compassionate are secondary to the fact that you work for a non-profit or a large corporation.

Ted Dekker once said "Life consists of cycles of remembering and forgetting and I, like you, still forget far too often...and in that forgetting, my view is clouded once more until I remember who I am and surrender who I am not."

That day, at church with my parents, I was reminded of who I am. I began to tie my identity to the factors that will always remain and not to the circumstances that are constantly ebbing and flowing through my life. I began to stop looking to my job, my friends and my situation to tell me who I am and started to embrace the truth of who God says that I am.

I willingly began to surrender who I am not and with a peaceful heart rested in the truth of who I am.