Warning: Things in this mirror may be larger than they appear!

I've known for quite some time that I'm an oxymoron. I'm a complex mix of many seemingly contradictory qualities or essences...a little bit of yin and yang of everything.

Recently, however, I've finally been coming face to face with yet another truth about myself: I'm also quite an optical illusion. Sometimes I am genuinely surprised and taken aback when I'm engaging with someone (usually someone new in my life, but not always) and I find they have somehow completely missed the "real" me. I'm surprised because I always try in my own way to simply be a very genuine person....and my expectations have been that surely this genuine-ness would find its way to the surface and magically reveal the true essence of "Kristy" to the world around me. I thought genuine-ness was the magic knife that cut through everything....the light that would serve as a sort of spotlight on reflecting my true self to the world. I am finally learning that an important piece has been missing. I've been keeping too much of myself to myself!

This past year has been monumental for me in many respects. Although I've always been a very self-reflective person and intentionally pursued paths which promised continued growth in my life, this year, in particular, has been filled with many key growth spurts. Most of these growth spurts occurred as a result of direct encounters with new people in my life...visitors who met me in a face-to-face exchange, held out their hand before me, and placed in my hand another piece to the puzzle....the puzzle that serves as the very roadmap leading me to the place to which I am trying to go.

Where is it I am trying to go, you ask?

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
~Henry David Thoreau

And on my way there, I am trying to visit this place:

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
~Howard Thurman

Actually, it's the coming alive part that has really been the most important aspect of the journey--I hadn't realized how much I'd not been living. You can't live the life you have imagined if your aren't even living yet!

Don't get me wrong....I've for the most part had a very good life. Some ups and downs along the way just like any other average human being, but overall I feel I've been plenty blessed in my lifetime. But, I recognized life was not yet everything it could be, and that's something I've been working hard on the last few years....the momentum building as time goes on.

So, back to these puzzle pieces that my fellow life travelers have been handing to me. I liken my experience in receiving each of these pieces back to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden....when they eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and "their eyes were opened." Although I'm not trying to draw comparisons about my current experiences with the concept of "sin" as it fits within the Adam and Eve story, I do find the "eyes opening" imagery to be quite descriptive in what I've experienced during each of these puzzle piece encounters. I am very much an experiential learner, and during each of these experiences my eyes literally opened up wider as new doors opened up before me, doors that led both to key new insights about myself and to new visions of the world around me. Each of these pieces has been crucial to leading me closer to the life I imagine....and I've recognized God's amazing grace wrapped around each piece as it's handed to me. Life just keeps getting better.

So, my latest self-awareness as being an optical illusion came about more as a follow-up to one of these puzzle-piece encounters. It came about as I wondered why it felt like I keep finding myself in moments when it seems I am running two minutes behind my own life. I keep missing trains that go by, as I am left waving my ticket in the air while the train fades off into the horizon ahead.

Then I had one of those moments where I woke up one day and realized I am not the person I say that I am. I suddenly realized while I talk about the importance of honesty and transparency in my life...I really don't offer this. Sure, it is indeed important to me and I value it wholeheartedly, just like being genuine.....but I suddenly realized this still doesn't mean I offer this. It suddenly dawned on me, in a very necessary and concrete way, that as an internal processor.....I am hardly transparent at all. As an internal processor I am completely honest and transparent and genuine on the INSIDE....but that looks so much different on the outside.

Suddenly it started to make all the more sense why people keep "missing" the real me: because I am slow to make her available to people. Not by any conscious intention. I've always known that it often takes time for people to get to know me...but I wasn't sure how to go about changing that. As I understood myself, I just thought that being a deeper person meant that it required others to be willing and patient enough in taking the time to get down into those deeper layers with me if they wanted to really get to know me. But now I am finally uncovering the pieces I needed to find that will enable me to be more fully present in the world as a more authentic version of myself in the here and now. I'm uncovering the pieces I needed to find in order to make sense of HOW I'm supposed to go about getting to where I've wanted to be for oh-so-long. I simply need to stop keeping too much of myself to myself! It's amazing how simple it feels when the pieces have been revealed. But I'm an experiential learner, and I just needed to have the right experience that opened the right door.

So my new intention is this: to more actively share with others about what I am thinking, as a way of being more present in the moment with people and sharing more of my true self with them. I realize, for me, that what I am "thinking" is not necessarily as simple as a concrete thought passing through my mind of which I consciously decide yay or nay whether to share aloud. As an internal processor, some of my "thinking" occurs in the very depths of my soul....and often not in clear, articulate form. Still, I recognize that there IS some sort of a small voice inside there that is fairly consistently calling out lines--lines which I am suddenly more conscious of....and realize that these are just as important to share with others in crucial moments if I am to have any hope of living the life that I imagine.

In doing so, I hope to repair the optical illusion situation I have managed to create for myself. So, lookout world: as objects in this mirror may be larger than they appear! I may look quiet and sweet and gentle on the outside....but there's a whole lot of passion just a-waitin' to be unleashed! I'm done keeping myself to myself...I want to share my passion with the world....hopefully in ways that will move and inspire others.