Identity
NOUN
– The fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
My identity, who am I?
I am a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a leader, a follower, a missionary. I am a child of the Father.
In the past month I have been struggling with my identity, who I am here in Thailand, having all of my identities from home stripped away. God took away all the things I thought I was and showed me who I was without him. I was lonely, closed off, ungrateful, bitter, jealous, angry and unable to love because I was empty. All I had left to find my identity in was God, it took me getting to my breaking point to start searching for who God has said I am. He started showing me who I had believed I was, he showed me that a lot of the things I thought were my identity had to do with my past. I was believing all of these lies about how the things in my past and my scars from those things defined me, and who I am.
This is a journal entry from October 8th
These are all truths I am working on believing. My past has shaped me, my scars have shaped me but they do NOT define me. They are not who I am today. Scars fade and can become BEAUTIFUL STORIES of HEALING and REDEMPTION. They can show other scared, broken people HOPE. They can show them the promise of God’s LOVE and COMFORT. My story is POWERFUL, my story is worth telling. The mistakes I have made in my past do NOT shape my future. I am an OVERCOMER, I am overcoming my scars and past. The people who have hurt me have NO POWER over me. They have no control over me. God’s love has FREED me. I am a child of God, a FORGIVEN, HEALED child. God CHOSE me, he CHOSE to love me and to USE ME for his purpose.
Those are truths God has to remind me of daily. He speaks them over me and reminds me I am who I am through Him. All of those “identities” He took away from me he is starting to bring back into my life but in a way that I can only be those things through Him. I am able to love people better if I am loving them with the strength of Christ rather than out of my own strength. I am able to follow better because I know that he is in control and I don’t have to feel like I am in control all the time. I am able to be myself because I am no longer afraid of people not loving me for who I am because God loves me for who I am and He knows more about me than anyone else ever will.
2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
I am a forgiven, healed, loved child of God.
