DAY22 - What Makes Me Different

30 Day Challenge

Gee. What does make me different?
Exploring the shallow end, we could mention how I spell my name with a Q, I wore duct taped leopard print slippers for much of high school (an "I don't care" statement more than a fashion statement), and sometimes I put my plastic dishes in rainbow order if the mood strikes me.
Or we could talk about the sweet little tidbits of the chic-flick sort--you know, the guy says he can prove he loves the girl because he knows she has 12 different smiles and can name what each smile means. Hah. I have issues with those love schemes, but they're cute enough. So about me, we'd say...Qait's different because she...
No, that's not working. Let's get to the deeper stuff.

I'm not different because I play the harp. I'm mostly different because of how I feel about the harp. I have a great passion for it, and my passion stems from my deepest belief in the eternal power of music combined with mankind's eternal potential for greatness. It's a little Ayn Rand sounding, but it's the foundation of my passion. That and the fact that harp really does seem to resonate with my soul, all the way back to before I ever played.

I'm not different because I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm not even "different" as a Latter-day Saint who has her heart wrapped around the gospel. There are so many like me. But I am different from nonmembers because of the way I live what I believe.

I'm not different because I'm a woman, but I am a different woman because of how I feel about womanhood. This facet of my character, if you will, was so important a detail to Michael that it was one of the first questions he asked me when we became serious about our dating: "How do you define the role of a woman?" And I answered without hesitation (almost to my surprise, since most questions like that leave me anxious in the worry that I'll leave out something important). A woman has the potential to become a wife and a mother, and that is a core part of her existence. We are built to nurture, to care and sacrifice for others. At the most natural and sensitive parts of our hearts, we are angelic. We love to love. We are happiest when we love. And somehow, the way this separates a woman from a man is not really in the definition of all of that but in the soul of it...women are especially tender creatures with most incredible power. We are not only beautiful in our purest womanhood, we are beauty.

I find a lot of pleasure in proclaiming "I am ME!" As simple and obvious a phrase it is, I love it because it's undeniable. I have often felt--and by often I mean ever since I was a child, with true pondering on the topic--that my spirit is ancient. I have been around for a long time. I have existed longer than my body has. I have had a place in the universe beyond the reaches of time. And the amazing thing is that it's true for all of us; before our spirits were born to Heavenly Father, an intelligence, a light, a something existed from which those spirits were created. I am a child of God, and He did not create me out of nothing. There is no "nothing" in me.
So while I am not always separable from the billions of people in the world, I am an individual. I am ME!