A few weeks ago, I went to Tennessee for World Race Training Camp. It was an incredible week of brokenness, healing, growth, redemption, and hope. I was able to meet my fellow racers, got placed into a really wonderful team, and started building relationships with the people that will become my family in the coming months.
I also had to face issues in my life that I thought I had put in the past, as well as come to terms with my identity in Christ. One of the most important lessons I had to learn was that about my strengths… and weaknesses. Throughout the week, God revealed to me areas of sin in my life that I was unaware of and had to address in order to move forward in my relationship with Him.
The hardest lesson was about what I considered my biggest strength: my independence. For years now being an independent, self-sufficient, and capable woman was something I prided myself on and thought was one of the best parts of my character. But there came a “dark night” at Training Camp when I saw that my biggest strength was, in fact, my biggest weakness. I found that what I saw as a good strength to have was causing me to be self-seeking and selfish. Instead of making me able to take on any challenge and overcome every odd, it encouraged me put my own needs and desires above those of everyone around me. I can’t even describe how wrecked I felt in that moment. The foundation of who I thought I was and what defined me crumbled beneath me and I was left standing in the debris of something I had once held dear.
I know that my independence is not a bad characteristic in and of itself. Its what I do with it and how I let it rule me that makes it a strength or weakness. I’m going to have to learn when to let my independence shine through and when to lay it down and put others ahead of myself. The word that I think God spoke into me during this time was “servant.” In other words, I need to learn to be a servant of others and not of myself.
As I returned home and started to process through everything from Training Camp, I felt a huge sense of confusion and uncertainty. Not about the World Race; perhaps for the first time I felt truly confident in moving forward with it. Instead, I’ve been having a full-blown Identity Crisis. Instead of being certain of who I am and who I was created to be, I feel like I’m discovering who I am in Christ all over again. It’s not a fun process at all, but I’m so hopeful that I will be more of who God is calling me to be at the end of this road. I’m reconciling who I want to be with who I really am.
Last night I went out to dinner with a trusted friend and coworker. I was able to share what I was going through and talk about the battle I was fighting, and he came back with some powerful truth that I needed to hear. He helped me realize that I had been looking at this Identity Crisis as a punishment and that I thought God was taking something away from me. But really, God is using this time to build me up and make me into a woman with a heart more like His. I’m not being destroyed, I’m being constructed into someone more whole and more complete.
“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.”
2 Corinthians 1:21-22
