Be who you were born to be

When Ozzie Smith learned he had been chosen for the Baseball Hall of Fame, a TV reporter asked him why he had decided to play baseball. His reply was simple: "I played because it's what I was put here to do."

Oprah Winfrey said this: "That whisper you keep hearing is the universe trying to get your attention . . . When you're true to who you are and what your spirit is telling you to do, that truth will indeed set you free. . . . Wherever I'm faced with a difficult decision, I ask myself: What would I do if I weren't afraid of making a mistake, feeling rejected, looking foolish or being alone? Remove the fear, and the answer comes into focus."

I believe we spend a good part of our life running from what life asks of us (just as we spend a good part of our life running from what God asks of us). We're afraid saying "yes" means saying "no" to so many other things we've grown accustomed to. But peace, I believe, can only come when we're true to the life we were meant to live.

Martha Beck, in her book "Finding Your Own North Star," said, "Your body is free but your heart is in prison. To release your heart, you simply reverse the process which locked it up. First you begin to listen for messages from your heart--messages you may have been ignoring since childhood. Next you must take the daring, risky step of expressing your heart in the outside world. ... As you learn to live by heart, every choice you make will become way of telling your story. ... It is the way you were meant to exist. If you stop to listen, you'll realize that your heart has been telling you so all along."