The behaviors we call our “personality” are mostly filled with our reactions to things that have happened in the past.

Would you believe me if I told you that your present reactions and behaviors are directly related to things you were delighted by or troubled by as a child?

The way you speak to family, friends, and strangers is based on that principle of former delight or trouble from past situations.

In marching band it was a normal custom to be hazed. We called it “crabbing.” It was a first year band member’s initiation process. We were trained to be disciplined, seen but not heard, and mistake free in performances. Due to this grueling process we first year members would involuntarily flinch anytime an upper-classmen would come too close to us.

Once we made it out of the crabbing phase, we no longer had to fear. Flinching was no longer an involuntary reaction for us. But what happens if that crabbing process, instead of taking only 4-5 months to complete took years– maybe even decades? Would those reactions become ingrained in us to the point where they no longer could be released and actually became apart of who we are?

This is an astonishing reality–that much of what we call our personality are just continuous reactions to trauma strung together until they become apart of us.

To think what would we actually be like without these traumas–how we would sound, how we would carry ourselves is a thought worth contemplating.

Are we actually being who we are–who we were called to be? Or are we daily reminders to ourselves and to others of the pain we once went through?

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” 2 Corinthians 5-17