Identity Crisis

money. clothes. style. car. job. friends. goals. attitude. tradition. education. family. success. failure. 

What defines you? 

This is a question that I have been trying to answer in one way or another for a number of years...

I remember being nine or ten and hearing Ben play one of my piano songs quite proficiently the first time through after I had just sat there and struggled through it for the 17th time. Not long after that, I forced him to sign a contract with me that said he wouldn't play any of my songs and I wouldn't play any of his. (I obviously did this for my benefit and not his so that he wouldn't get ahead of me.) Eventually, I realized that his musical abilities were far and above anything I could ever do and I destroyed our little contract. I am exceedingly proud of him now and the apparent gift he has been given for music. It's amazing to see Samantha developing her musical abilities first with the flute and now piano, William has been getting increasingly better at the violin and Timothy just recently picked up the cello. I guess the musical gene missed me.

Music was clearly not my thing... 

But that was my problem, or so I thought. I never had "one thing" that defined me or motivated me. Even though it was about six years ago, I still remember the day that my mom found the song 'My One Thing' by Rich Mullins for me after I was especially feeling like I didn't really have anything that was "special" or "mine". She encouraged me to remember that having a special talent or gift or calling outside of Christ is absolutely futile and pointless. Even people that do have amazing abilities and gifts can use them in a way that doesn't bring glory to Christ.

And she has been right about it every time since then too. I still find myself sometimes absentmindedly searching for one thing that defines me other than Christ. But nothing else satisfies. Not good academics, not friends, not a herd of cattle and the idea of farming, not photography - nothing I do in and of myself satisfies the longing inside me to have an identity. 

It is easy to compare myself to those around me, which leads to believing in the lies of insecurity and insufficiency, which leads to sometimes forgetting who I am in Christ and what God has done for me. It is a quick snowball effect that rapidly tries to steal away my joy and contentment in Christ. It is the world's identity theft. It's important to often remind ourselves and each other that God knows who we really are and that He loves us and created us for a purpose!

Every time I feel a pity-party-identity-crisis coming along to steal, rob, and destroy I need to take a step back and realize that my identity is not in the clothes I wear or the shoes I buy, or  in the musical abilities that I wish I possessed... it can only ever be in Christ and His finished work on the cross! 

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.