What Made You Bitter?
Or patient.
Courageous.
Resilient.
Compassionate.
We don't wake up one morning and suddenly become those things. Life shapes us, one experience and one decision at a time. Which is why I've started asking myself a different question.
Who are you becoming?
I've come to believe that's one of the most important questions we'll ever ask ourselves because whether we realize it or not, life is constantly shaping us. Every success leaves a mark. Every failure does too. Every relationship, every difficult conversation, every mistake, every victory, and every season of life quietly changes us. Most of the time we don't even notice it's happening until one day we realize we're not quite the same person we used to be.
The question is whether we're paying attention.
That question found me in a season of my life when I wasn't looking for it.
During my divorce, some horrible things were said about me. If you've ever been through a divorce, you know how ugly those conversations can become. Some of the things that were said about me hurt because they simply weren't true. Other things hurt because they contained just enough truth to make me question myself.
For a while, I wore those words like they belonged to me.
I carried the guilt.
I carried the shame.
I carried the scarlet letter that had been sewn onto my chest.
I stopped seeing those words as accusations and started seeing them as my identity.
Looking back, that's probably the most dangerous thing labels can do. They don't just describe who we were in a moment. They quietly convince us that's who we'll always be.
Eventually I reached a point where I couldn't carry those labels anymore.
One day I found myself thinking, "I'm not those things."
Maybe they were true.
Maybe they weren't.
But they weren't true right now.
That realization stopped me in my tracks.
If those labels no longer defined me, then who was I?
At first, that felt like the right question.
Who am I?
The more I sat with it, the more I realized I was still looking in the wrong direction.
"Who am I?" assumes I'm standing still.
I'm not.
Neither are you.
Life doesn't stop long enough for us to figure it all out.
It's shaping us while we're living it.
Every experience leaves something behind.
Every decision does too.
Whether we notice it or not, we're becoming someone.
That's when the question changed.
Instead of asking, "Who am I?" I started asking, "Who am I becoming?"
That question changed everything.
It shifted my focus away from labels and toward decisions.
It shifted my focus away from my past and toward the direction I wanted to go.
It reminded me that while I can't change every experience I've lived through, I do have a say in what those experiences produce in me.
I don't get to control everything that happens to me.
I do get to decide what it produces in me.
Am I becoming more patient or more bitter?
More compassionate or more cynical?
More curious or more defensive?
More willing to have hard conversations or more likely to avoid them?
Those aren't questions I answer once.
I answer them every single day.
The truth is, all of us are becoming someone.
The person who's constantly blaming other people didn't become that way overnight.
The person everyone trusts didn't either.
The leader people want to follow didn't wake up one morning with that ability.
Neither did the parent whose kids feel safe talking about anything.
Those people became who they are one decision at a time.
So do we.
That's why I think this question matters so much.
It pulls us out of autopilot.
It reminds us that today's decisions aren't isolated moments. They follow us. They become habits. Those habits become character. That character becomes the person we're known as.
Life is shaping you right now.
It's shaping me too.
The only question is whether we're intentionally participating in that process or simply letting it happen without noticing.
So here's the question I'd love for you to carry with you long after you've finished reading this.
Not, "Who am I?"
Who are you becoming?