perfume

It was a warm spring day on the coast of California.  I was in the middle of 8th grade.  At recess time my best friend, Audra, and I walked outside with our fresh-out-of-college teacher to meet his girlfriend.  I was immediately entranced.  She was so grown up.  (24 years old :) She was petite, with a great curly blond bob.  She was sassy, confident, cool.  I wanted to be her so badly.

And then I smelled her perfume.  I can still remember right where I was standing, and just what it smelled like.  It was a new smell, but I loved it.  At some point I got up the nerve to ask her what it was and she told me.  Coty Wild Musk Oil.

I told my mom about it that afternoon.  How I had to have that perfume or I would never become the person I was meant to be.  My sweet momma obliged, and bought me my first little brown bottle of perfume and I've worn it every single day since.

Oh, I've tried other perfumes.  I never liked Coty Musk's tiger print ad campaign, or the name that sounds like a jungle cow, or the plain brown bottle, or that my perfume is sold in the aisles at K-Mart. But I LOVE the smell. And nothing else will do.  Nothing else is Erin.

As I think back to that spring day, I know it was one of the first steps in finding out who I was and building my identity.

There have been other landmark identity days.
     I remember the bleachers in the gym at HVA where I fell in love watching a blond, basketball player named Steve.
     I can smell the yellow honeysuckle in WVA and see the vivid blue of the jacaranda trees in CA that inspired my wedding colors and backdropped as Mom and I walked and solved myrids of school/relationship/life problems.
     I remember where I was sitting at a Willow Creek Church conference when I decided I really wanted to be a pastor.
     I know the beds in Mission Hospital where I first held my baby boys.
     I think about the classrooms and halls of Spartanburg Hospital where I excavated my soul and started over.
     And, of course, in my living room 6 months ago, when I first held my white purr ball, Sullivan, and realized that I was, shockingly, a cat person...

My search for identity makes me impatient, curious, tired, confident and intrigued.  And I am starting to realize that it will continue for the rest of my life.

I bought a book this week called The Gift of Being Yourself, The Sacred Call to Self Discovery.  Right away it caught my eye when David Benner wrote "God is the only context in which our being makes sense."  It reminded me that my spiritual being can't be compartmentalized from my identity.  My spiritual journey is My Journey.

Benner also shares this beautiful quote from Thomas Merton.  There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God.  If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.