aleks peterson | author

When I was 16, I lost a full-ride Air Force scholarship over eczema. Fourteen years later, now married with two small children but still obsessed with military aviation, I quit my job and sold our house to try again. I received a medical waiver, commissioned in the Air Force through Officer Training School, and was on my way to pilot training when I was again disqualified from flying–this time for a rare eye condition that had previously gone undetected.

I was, and still am, devastated.

I found a new civilian job, but it took months to function again. During this dark period, I struggled with many spiritual questions and, most of all, bitterness. I began to realize that the reason my failure hurt so much was that I had built an entire identity around my career, and when that fell through in the most spectacular and inconvenient way, I died. Not part of me. All of me. Because all of me had been invested in this dream that dissolved like a mirage in the desert.

We have all been ruined this way or will be at least once in our lives, but I don’t think it has to kill us. It must not. This is my new mission. A writer and editor by trade, I spend my free time researching the psychology and theology of human identity and pouring what I learn into my forthcoming book, In a Mirror, Dimly. It is my hope that this book will provide hope and guidance and protection for many others facing the prolonged identity crisis that is life.