A Beautiful Year: Part Two

Learning how to find my identity in Christ has been the theme of my Race since the very beginning. You can read about that in a blog I wrote in month two.

One of the first nights at training camp one of the staff people came up to me during worship and asked me what I wanted from God. I told her that I wanted to find my identity in Christ, and not what other people think of me.

I said it mostly because I didn’t know what else to say, but when I look back now, I think I also said it because it was true. Because it was something I desperately wanted. I wanted to get to the place where I would be okay if God was the only one who ever called me beautiful, who ever pursued me. I wanted His opinion of me to be the only thing that mattered. To get rid of the taint of other people’s opinions and see myself as God sees me.

Well.

God is pretty crazy.

One day at training camp someone came up to me during worship and said God wanted me to know how beautiful I was. She said she saw me in a beautiful dress, dancing before my Father, twirling and laughing and God was just smiling at me like I was the most beautiful thing He had ever seen. A few days later someone else came up to me and said that she saw me walking down a street, and everyone was staring at me because of how beautiful I was, and God was at the end of the street looking at me and smiling at me, like I was the most beautiful creature He had ever beheld.
 
For those of you who know me well, you can bet a lot of awkward Jen laughter followed these statements.