Yesterday’s question got me thinking about the answer for today’s.
What have you embraced about your identity?
Yesterday, as I was writing and thinking about my teammates speaking truth into me it lead me down the path of my identity. This is one area, that I thought I was already pretty strong with when I came on the race. But God has brought me so much further over the last 11 months.
Somewhere in the files of my phone is a blog that I wrote but wasn’t willing to post for some reason, I think maybe it was because now is a better time to share.
The part of my identity that I have embraced most is that I am handmade by a perfect creator.
When I started this journey a year and a half ago I chose a verse that I believed would carry me through the race, and it has. It has followed me in a way I never would have thought. Ephesians 2:10 is on my fundraising cards, the inspiration for my fundraising t-shirts and has come to mean so much to me.
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
I loved the “good works” phrasing in this verse, that it meant He created us to go out and do good things that He has already prepared for us. No, they aren’t required, but it’s what we were made for.
Eventually instead of being about what I was made to do, Ephesians 2:10 became about who He made me to be. Like so many others in life I’ve struggled with so many insecurities. Inadequacies, short comings, peculiarities, hurts, poor choices, history. At some point in our life, no matter our circumstances, we start believing we are not enough.
It reminds me that no mater what anyone says, or how the world behaves I serve a God who created me — created all that I am. He doesn’t make mistakes and He lovingly created me, stitched me together in my mother’s womb and He calls me precious.
Masterpiece, handiwork, workmanship-all of these words are found in different translations of that verse. And they all mean the same thing. We are His, created by Him.
The creative/art/handmade aspect of this verse is not lost on me and it serves another powerful reminder of the importance and value of the creator He made me to be. A side of myself that you may know from reading my previous blogs I almost gave up on. I now understand how important that side of me is to my identity and plan to continue to walk in that role as a creator the rest of my life, no matter what I end up doing.
A few months ago our squad coaches blessed us with new names, a biblical tradition that points to how important the names we give things are.
They called me “God’s Masterpiece” a fitting reminder of the verse that God has forever branded on my heart and all this journey has brought me to realize.
