During the first two weeks of the race, I prayed this so. many. times. “Lord, what does hope in You look like?”
And one morning I was reading in Luke and read Luke 1:45, “And blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
So this is hope in the Lord—trusting and believing that the Lord will fulfill His promises to you. Then, “Lord, what have you spoken over me?”
After some praying and journaling and recalling some conversations with some really special people, I felt like God is truly calling me to step into a bold authority of who I am. Speaking His Truth and living life with boldness, while absolutely radiating joy and wisdom.
Through a little softening of my heart and through a teaching we had one morning before ministry, I realized the first thing standing in the way of stepping into this calling.
The first thing standing in the way: my IDENTITY.
Identity is who someone is. It’s the distinguishing character or personality of an individual. It’s something where at first I thought, “I don’t struggle with this, I know who I am.” But really, identity has been a battlefield for me for a very long time.
I love people so much. I’m pretty extroverted. I just love spending time with people. But very easily, I can find myself looking for approval from the people around me rather than from God, and very easily letting them write a story of who I am, rather than letting God write the story of who I am. And in high school that was something that I struggled with, but pushed away and buried deep because I didn’t want anyone to know. I tried to cover it up with a mask of confidence, when I wasn’t always feeling confident. Or I tried to act like I wasn’t hurt, when in fact, I was hurt a lot.
Let me be vulnerable for a second. During my 4 years of high school, I went through a couple breakups that I really took straight to heart. Looking from the outside, you might not have realized how hurt I was through it all but that was just me burying these things deep down. No matter the REAL reason behind the breakup, in some way or another I blamed myself. I thought that if I would’ve done something different, if I would have been more this or less that, or if I was just good enough then these things wouldn’t have happened. Even besides the breakups, I had a few friendships which ended in what felt like betrayal. It might have only been a few relationships, but they just happened to be some of the ones I held near to my heart. It became a deep internal narrative for myself. It was so deep that if anything in the slightest seemed wrong, or if anyone I was friends with acted different for just a second, I thought that maybe it was something I had done wrong.
God definitely knew this was something big standing in the way of me becoming who he was calling me to be. So he took an opportunity to start molding me, like the artist He most definitely is. A couple Thursdays ago, the whole squad spent the morning in our dining room/living room listening to some teachings. The first talk was about identity (surprise right?) and the second talked about hearing the voice of God. After the talk, they asked for someone courageous who wanted to come up in front of everyone and do a listening prayer with one of our leadership members.
My heart started beating really fast and before I knew it, I was at the front of the room, about to participate in a listening prayer thinking, “I haven’t heard God speak to me in weeks, why would I hear him now? Why did I even volunteer for this?” But I did volunteer, and I did hear the voice of God. So did Gabe, the leadership member standing beside me also listening for God’s voice.
Gabe looked me in the eye and told me the vision God laid before him, specifically for me. ME—The girl who days earlier admitted to her friends that she sometimes struggled with feeling like she wasn’t good enough. The girl who felt so convicted during the talk about identity because she truly started to realize this was something she might have a problem with.
He looked at me and said that God gave him a vision of a sunset and a sunrise – both at the same time. My old view of my identity, less than what God intended for me, is setting and a new identity is rising. And in this new identity, I have a crown, and I’m both a queen and a princess.
Okay, TEARS right???
But after having an internal narrative that says things are my fault, and that I have to be a certain way for people to love me or want to be around me isn’t so easily changed. There’s a difference in knowing these things in my head and having the heart knowledge for these things. I have to remember that my experience isn’t always the Truth.
There are some days that a little voice in my head tells me lies and tries to fill me with doubt, but each day God is speaking words into my soul. God is writing my identity on my heart. My true identity. Not the one where the world says you aren’t good enough, but the one where God looks at you, grabs your hand and says, “My dear, you are more than enough.” This is a place where I am growing. And even though everyday things change, it’s something so profound and worth sharing. Even if each day is almost like a rough draft for the next day.
I am:
Worthy.
Called.
Chosen.
Enough.
Beautiful.
Precious.
Bold.
“Worth it”
“You can’t imagine how much you mean to me”
A daughter.
God is speaking these into my soul, molding me to believe this Truth. A Truth I can proclaim to my friends, to the world, to other people who might feel the same way I have felt.
God is also speaking these things into your soul, because this is your true identity too.
“Words spoken into a soul are like hands of a potter pressed against wet clay.” – Erwin McManus, The Artisan Soul
