I'm an Odd Duck

If you've perused through my old blogs you may have noticed some incongruous entries.  Common wisdom dictates that I should eliminate those blogs as being "off brand" if I want to "succeed" as a blogger.  I totally get that.  It is off brand.  If I'm not speaking to a singular audience it can get confusing or disappointing, especially if you come here for one thing and get something else.  So I thought I better talk about that today.

As the title of the post indicates, I am an odd duck.  I am a mess of contradictions in a dress as Fiona sings in Shrek: the Musical.  Everyone thinks that, you know. Everyone is a little bit right.  While the love of my Lord and Savior is the main focus of my life, and the core of my being, it isn't all.  How God has created us to be is individual but the unique place God has just for us only fits right when we're in the center of His will.  It is so easy to feel that longing for uniqueness, for specialness, and to go the way of the world.  God has hard wired some very specific things into our souls.  The longing for Him and the longing for who He has made us to be.  Whether we have accepted the gift God gave to the whole world or not, those two things are still true.  For the world, that means those two hard wired longings still pull at their core.  They just fill those longings with things other than what was intended. As Believers, we are not immune.  I find myself swinging in a wide pendulum when I fail to be in the center of God's hard wired longings.  I try and fill the longing with the wrong things or I eliminate everything for the sake of not falling into the first trap.  Neither extreme is good.   All of the weird, zany, contradictory bits that make up the me that God intended aren't things to be peeled away and discarded.  They are all part, in the proper place, of what God designed. 

I'm a role player, a lover of musicals, a voracious reader, an avid costume wearer, an escape room aficionado, a chronic health sufferer, childless, a volunteer, a yuppy wannabe, blunt, stubborn, a lover of comedic music and show tunes and nothing else (common catch phrase "It's not Weird Al"), proud owner of a chinneck, cat lover, lover of playing board games and a wife.  Sometimes I put on every color of makeup I own so I can talk about serious things.  Sometimes I stay up all night to finish a volunteer project.  Each of these pieces are part of the landscape and tapestry of my life.  The landscape changes on occasion. Interests wax and wane.  But each of these things are a part of how God is using me.  

So if it seems weird that I occasionally share comic con news or my next favorite RPG game just remember you're still in the right place.  Take those moments to think about how God has made you uniquely you.  Strengths and weakness, weirdness and wonder.  It's all the you God is molding into the person He wants you to be.  And when you remember that about yourself, remember it about everyone else too. Because sometimes adventure is settling into your own weird without it becoming a badge you hit people with.