Cutting the fat... in a manner of speaking.

I was listening to this uber-geek podcast that I'm a fan of this morning (SciFi short stories brought to you by EscapePod.  There's your nerd-friendly shout out for the week), and got a little reflective.  The story of the week was basically about the potential integration of nanobot level sentient beings integrating into human society, and this being accomplished by combining the nanobots with human entities who have be stripped down of all personality to purely moral beings.  (The idea behind this was that morality is somehow inherited genetically, and that since the nano-thingies lacked an actual connection to DNA, they wouldn't have basic genetic morality.  Integrating them with a purely moral being would allow them to develop with morals alongside humans.  Trust me, it's all very fake-sciencey.)

I started thinking about all of this though, about the idea of being stripped of your personality and individuality in order to become a purely moral being.  And maybe it's because I was on my way home from church, but it really made me think about the process of sanctification.  As we slough off our sin nature and become more and more like Christ, it can feel exactly like that.  Because that's what we say, right?  More of You, and less of me.

In truth, I've been anxious about a great many life stages for this reason.  I was nervous about graduating college, getting married, getting jobs, and having a child, all because I felt it meant I would be stripped of what made me "me", and I would become this generic entity, "wife", "mother", "Christian".  It's embarrassing to admit, but there's something really terrifying about losing yourself, in any capacity.  My mental critic always responds, "Right, because YOU'RE so great in the first place.  God forbid the world loses a little piece of YOU."  But there it is.  The truth is, I have a tendency to love myself an awful stinkin' lot, and I don't honestly want to see less of me.

But then I started thinking more.  Just in the same way that, through weight loss, I am able to whittle away the amorphous blob I've become and find the true person who lives deep down inside, through sanctification, God strips away all of the fat, the trash, and the crap that I've been coated in.  We don't become less of ourselves, in His hands, we become more.  Because after all, it's the great Craftsman who is holding the chisel in this scenario.  The Creator doesn't create in order to destroy, he simply wants to display his creation as originally intended.

Still though, it can be terrifying to allow someone, even a Gracious Lord, to take control in my life.  But hey, He actually loves me BETTER than I love myself: he loves me broccoli, when I love me fudge brownie.  And as someone who has begun to learn the real virtue of those little green florets, well, I think I'll take it.