Who am I?
You've wondered this for yourself lots of times before.
I know you have.
For a while, like 5 minutes during my senior year, I thought I knew who I was.
I was discontent, but I had my niche. I had my friends, and I had a tentative plan for my life. (graduate. burn all my music. travel. travel some more.)
But then school finally ended, praise the Lord God above in Heaven.
"Freedom." Freedom from 22 credit semesters, 10 pages research papers, recitals, rehearsals and terrible 3 hour night classes.
I walked across a stage, shook some hands, got on a plane to Poland an hour later, sang a lot, got on a plane back to the USA, spent a lot of time in the bloody Newark airport and then I was home.
WHAT. THE. HECK. JUST. HAPPENED.
Were the last three years real??
WHO AM I?!
And how do I find my identity in Christ?
NOW WHAT?
Complete excitement and thankfulness for my new found freedom was overshadowed by this over arching question. Although I hated school, who was I without it? How do I function without constant stress? Who am I responsible to? How do I find my identity in Christ rather than grades and relationships and busyness?
I think I had this weird idea in the back of my mind, probably generating from my freshmen level psychology class. I was told that these next few years of my life were the formation of who I would be for the rest of my life. That kind of terrified me. But I also found a little comfort in resigning myself to my inevitable fate. Who was I to argue with Erik Erikson? I've always craved a stable sense of identity, we all have. I figured I'd wake up one day and realize I'd turned into LYDIA and that was it. No more questioning.
FALSE.
When I got done with school, I thought maybe I just hadn't reached that point yet. Maybe I was just a little bit develompentally behind everyone else.
NOPE.
And then I got to training camp…
"You are free. TRULY FREE. You aren't bound or defined by likes and dislikes, fears or the past. Just be My daughter. Let Me define you."
Several days ago I was leaning over the bathroom sink splashing soap off of my face and I realized the answer to my identity crisis.
Identity is not a mystical sense set statically in your being.
Identity in Christ comes from the choices you make every second.
IDENTITY DOES NOT COME FROM THE CHOICES YOU HAVE MADE IN THE PAST.
"Our identity should be seen as an ongoing process. Rather than a static snapshot, we should embrace a flowing sense of self, whereby we are perpetually re-framing, re-organizing, re-thinking and re-considering ourselves. How different would life be if rather than asking who am I, we contemplated how we'd like to engage life?"
(Full article here – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shift-mind/201006/who-am-i)
What does that look like? I'll get back to you.
