Growing up in the United States in today’s age can cause a lot of confusion about identity. It seems like everyone is telling you that you create your own identity. That you can change yourself to be anything you can possibly imagine. This puts people in the mindset of “I must work and search for my identity and figure out who I am.” The problem is that anytime we go out looking to find identity in anything of the world it is false identity, and it will fail. Then when it does fail us, our world comes crashing down and we become lost because what we thought was the core of who we are has now just been destroyed leaving us thinking, if the thing that makes me me is gone, who am I? We begin to feel utterly lost, as though nothing can truly fill that hole inside; we feel like we’re worthless because everything we found worth in is gone. The truth is we’re searching for identity in the wrong place.
The core of who we are can’t be created. It can’t be found in the world. It can’t be found in other people. It can’t be found in how successful we are. It can’t even be found in ourselves. If we find identity in any of these things we’re making for ourselves a foundation that will fail. The only identity that will not fail us is an identity in the Father’s love. It is the true core of who we are. We are defined not by who we create ourselves to be, but by the one who created us.
It took me a long time to learn this. Not until I was in Chile a couple months ago did I truly start to grasp my true identity. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I was loved by God, but I didn’t view it as a part of what made me who I am. I guess I viewed the Fathers love like the love of humans; I viewed it in the foggy lens of my earthly relationships. Experiences with love that often let me down. I projected this onto the Lord. I was scared to let love define me when it seemed to be so fleeting. Then one day when I was laying in my bed in Chile, the song “No Fear in Love” started playing on my phone. I sat there and thought that I definitely felt a lot of fear in love. Love makes it harder when people leave. If you don’t love and let yourself feel all the things then it won’t be as painful when people leave. Where I went wrong was thinking that God was going to leave at some point. Also the love I had seen from people was just a muddy reflection of the Lords love. He is love itself, he is the reason humans can love. He is the source of what love is at it’s core.
I realized instead of love from people affecting how I love God, I needed to let how God loves me affect how I love people. When I find identity in the Fathers love, I have a solid foundation that will never fail me. It will allow me to reach out and love people because I’ll have that foundation to fall back on even if people fail me. My identity will never change. I think Brennan Manning puts it best when she says “Define yourself as one radically loved by God. This is your true self, every other identity is an illusion”
