Who do you say you are? I'll go first.
There are many
different ways I label myself. The most common labels are: female, 25 year-old,
friend, sister, daughter, colleague, student, singer, youth group leader,
Nigerian, etc. While these things are all true, none of them entirely describes
the fullness of what really makes me tick, neither do they reflect the
potentials that lie within me and all that I am capable of being.
The most important piece of my
identity is my identity in Christ. I am who God is and who He made me to be;
everything else that I am steams from this central identity. My identity as a
child of God is the only identity that is constant. All the other identities stated
at first could be taken away. For one, I could lose the people I love. The organization
I work with could decide that they no longer require my services. I could lose
my voice. My friends could drift away. I could even lose my home or be forced
to run for my life with my family, like refugees are doin’ somewhere out there
as I type these words from the comfort of my room.
Should I choose first to be
identified by my role as a girlfriend, what if my significant other is no more?
Would that make me any less me? If I am always so defined by my intellect, my
language, my articulation and my abilities, then who will I be if I happen to
suffer amnesia, Alzheimer’s disease or maybe if I am rendered handicap in some
way, will I cease to be me? It just means that my whole world will come
crumblin’ down if I base my identity on any of these temporary roles. As much
as I may delight in these things, my role as any of these personalities is not my
core identity. I am a being first, before I am anything else.
I’d like to remind you that you,
dear lady reading this, are not your bra size, nor the width of your waist. You
are not your skin colour, neither are you defined by the attention you get from
males or anyone for that matter. You are the content of your character, you are
the ambitions that drive you. You are the thoughts that you think. You are
beautiful and desirable not because anyone thinks so, but for the spark of life
within you that no one else can bring. You are not the shape of the vessel, you
are the volume of the soul it carries.
You have only one certainty in
life, only one identity that is secure: that is your identity in Christ.
Conflict and death and instability and a diagnosis could take every other
identity away from you in one skinny minute, but nothin’ can take away who you
are in Christ. As a matter of fact, you are not your own; you are nobody
outside Him! Only through Him, are any of us who we are. He is the Ultimate
Identity and nothing can take that away. Not famine, not sword, neither trial nor
hunger.
When you truly find your identity
in Christ, you no longer feel superficial and insecurity gives way. Because at its
core, insecurity is rooted in a case of mistaken identity.
Our most important identity of all
is that we are God’s children. I forget that often, you too?
We have laid so much of our
identity on the altar of public opinion, cultural sway, performance, status and
the desire to be known. This stunts the growth of our self-worth and pushes our
true identity under the pile. Let today be the day we let go of our stunted
self-worth and bloom.
