I’ve learned a lot in the last few years about losing things that shook my very identity. Losing both of my parents caused me to feel like an orphan, even at 50 years old. I was frightened by the lost sense of security, no longer knowing there was someone on earth who would always take care of me after my mother died. Losing my first-born son this year caused me to feel like a failure as a parent, even though my son was a beautiful, talented, loving adult and father when he died by his own hand. I was shaken by the lack of control I could have over someone I loved so, so dearly. Losing my husband (to divorce, not death) several years ago caused me to feel like a failure as a wife and as a godly woman. I lost my passion in many ways when that relationship failed and still worry that I may never be completely unguarded.
I am in no way fully healed from any of these things. However, I will say that I have some new understandings. I see ways in which I’ve misplaced my anchors. For the most part, the thing that I am holding on to, the little thread that I attach myself to that saves me on most days, is the knowledge that I have an unfolding identity that over-rides all of the ways I identified myself by previously. It isn’t unfolding in the sense that it is being created as much as it is unfolding in the sense that great sculptures are made … in the chipping away of everything that is not “it.”
I have to get to know myself in ways I never did before. I am more than my parents’ child. I am more than a loving mother. I am more than a wife or an ex-wife and even more than a woman. We all are so much more than the circumstances to which we are born and live through. I am more than all the ways I’ve failed in so many areas of life and more than all the failures of people I have loved. I have to learn to see myself the way God sees me. Unique. Formed for a purpose. Forgiven. Loved … immensely… and driven to love others in spite of ourselves. If I don’t learn to identify myself in God – in the Christ who rescued me and teaches me to let go of the me I thought I knew – then I will learn to hate. Because when I identify myself by the brokenness I’ve endured and the pain that surrounds me in this world, it’s hard to see or understand love.
So, if you find yourself identifying strongly with cultural symbols or ideas that don’t lead to the narrow way of love, take the time to see if this might be an area of misplaced identity in your own life. Is there eternal value and virtue there? Is God building a kingdom of love through this aspect of your self-built or inherited identity? To whom are you truly loyal? In whom (or what) do you actually place your faith? There is nothing harder that we face in this world than “dying to self” while still walking the earth. But, if you believe Jesus, it’s what we all must do.
Finding a new "normal" 