Identity Crisis

The letter came in the mail.  An invitation to my ten year high school class reunion.  As some are inclined to do, I began the debate of whether or not to attend.  I hadn't seen most of my fellow graduates since the day we turned our tassels.  We went separate ways, down different paths and out into the great unknown of life.

For some of my classmates, I was curious to see where life had taken them.  Facebook and social media had yet to take off, (I'm totally dating myself here) so I couldn't just hop on the computer and 'creep' as they call it, to satisfy curiosity.  Not that I do that anyway....  ;)

So, after much thought, I turned in the card, paid the fee and made plans to attend.  Upon arrival, I was a little disappointed that so many classmates I wanted to see, chose not to attend.  And those that I did talk to, seem to have 'gone far' in life.  College professors and teachers.  Lawyers and doctors and pharmacists.  Even a bio-chemist.  And for the first time since birthing babies, I felt.... inadequate.

I was a homemaker.  A wife.  A new Mom to two babies, ages 21 months and six months.  I was exhausted, thankful to get a shower most days, and held a humble two year degree with no career.  My 'work' was diapers and feedings and corralling.  My salary was in peanut butter and jelly kisses.  And never mind the fact I was still holding tight to the baby weight from my last child.

I had never felt like I had 'missed the boat' before.  In fact, I was doing exactly what I wanted.   I had pride in my husband for his hard work so I could live my dream.  I had contentment in Motherhood, even on the difficult days.  So where was this coming from?

In complacency of day to day to life, I had poured all of my identity into what I did.  Not who I was. 

And then it was gone...

 

For over ten years I had been a wife.  A stay-at-home-mom for close to eight.

I found myself a single mom to three with divorce pending, desperately searching for a job with a major gap in unemployment on a resume'.

Everything I had ever known was stripped away in an instant.  I was left holding the pieces of a broken life.  I was trying desperately to put them back together.  But unlike a puzzle, I had no picture to reference.  I didn't know who I was anymore.


Despairingly, I cried out to Almighty God.  And He answered.

I had to go back to the basics. 

Truth:: 

 

My identity....and your identity is not in what we do.  Our identity is in Christ.  It is wrapped in Who He is.  It has nothing to do with what we have accomplished.    

Once we take that first step into the acquiescence of grace, we become a new creation.  We take on a new identity.  The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

According to God, I am:

  Chosen:

• 1 Peter 2:9 - But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
  
  Ephesians 1:4-5 - For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.
  
  John 1:12-13 -  Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
  
  Galatians 4:6-7 - Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”  So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

• Treasured

  Psalm 139: 1-18 - You have searched me, Lord,
      and you know me.
  ² You know when I sit and when I rise;
      you perceive my thoughts from afar.
  ³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
      you are familiar with all my ways.
  ⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
      you, Lord, know it completely.
  ⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
      and you lay your hand upon me.
  ⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
      too lofty for me to attain.
  
  ⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
      Where can I flee from your presence?
  ⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
      if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
  ⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
      if I settle on the far side of the sea,
  ¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
      your right hand will hold me fast.
  ¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
      and the light become night around me,”
  ¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
      the night will shine like the day,
      for darkness is as light to you.
  ¹³ For you created my inmost being;
      you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
  ¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
      your works are wonderful,
      I know that full well.
  ¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
      when I was made in the secret place,
      when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
  ¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
      all the days ordained for me were written in your book
      before one of them came to be.
  ¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
      How vast is the sum of them!
  ¹⁸ Were I to count them,
      they would outnumber the grains of sand—
      when I awake, I am still with you.

  
  

  Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

•  Forgiven

  Colossians 2:13-14 - When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
  
  Psalm 103:12 (NLT) - He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.
  
  Ephesians 1:7 (NLT) -  He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.
  
  

•  Loved 

  Romans 5:8 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
  
  Ephesians 2:4-5 - But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 
  
  1 John 4:9-11 - This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 
  
  1 John 3:1 - See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 
   

• Sealed

  2 Corinthians 1:21-22 - Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
  
  John 10:29 - My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 
  
  John 11:25-26a - Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.  
  
  
  Although I'm heading down a road I didn't plan, and everything about me and around me has changed.  
  
  He is constant.  He has remained the same.  
  
  And the promises He gave on the day I surrendered my life to him, hold true. 
  
  And that can never be taken away.  
  
  Despite my faults.  
  Regardless of how I spend my days.  
  Independent of my marital status.  
  Not because I'm perfect, but because He is.  
  
  I can know who I am in Him.  And so can you.
  
  
  

  Is there a time where you have ever experienced an identity crisis?  How did God work through that?

  What are some of the promises He has shown you as you faced a changing season in your life?  

  
  Please share in the comments.  I believe we all can learn from and encourage each other as He works in our lives.
  
  **All Bible references are New International Version unless otherwise noted.