There’s something about this time we’re living in…. something about this time of “reset”….
It seems like God is surfacing and stripping away false things… false identities. Hindrances…
It’s so easy to take a look at our lives, and find something we enjoy doing, maybe even something we’re good at doing, perhaps something that others think we’re good at doing…. and then we cling to that, and then we decide “this is who I am.”
Who “I am” is not necessarily what I do. Who “I am” is not supposed to be something I create for myself.
I was created by a Creator, fashioned in a very unique way, for a very specific purpose.
Who “I am” is so much deeper than what I do, or how I live my life —in fact, the “what I do” can begin to get in the way of “who I truly am” if I allow it to….
As I think about “identity” and I look back on the seasons of my life, I can see the identity labels I’ve decided to cling to over the years…
When I was a kid it was,
“Scaredy cat”
“Girl who doesn’t say a single word all day at school”
“Good girl”
“Girl who never gets her name written on the board at school”
And then it was,
“Diabetic“
“Angry, selfish brat…”
Later on it was more like,
“My parents’s daughter”
“My sister’s sister”
“So and so’s friend…”
I was pretty content with those because I loved to hide behind people, it’s still something I have to really watch for in my life today.
“Jason’s wife…”
Yep, that has been ‘one’ too.
Here’s a big one,
“Photographer“
And many of these are good things, good qualities to have…. but none of them are my “identity”… none of these things are “who I am” and who I am alone, deep down.
And here’s the question…
Why do we cling to these things so closely, why do they become so unhealthy to us?
If I had none of these things, if I had none of these qualities or characteristics, if ALL of these things were suddenly stripped away from me in an instant, who would I be then? Would I be okay and content with being just me?
If God asked me to lay any of these things down, and if He asked me to do something outside of some of these qualities, would I be able to just lay them down, and do what He asks me to do?
The Lord has been working on these kinds of things in me for a little while now, and I’m noticing that I’ve wanted to cling to some of these ways a little harder than others.
But something about these times, something about the “reset” that God is doing in the whole world right now…. something about this “stripping away”…. it’s doing something, it’s making a lot of us very uncomfortable, and it’s giving opportunity for a lot of us to take a look at our own ways.
Many of our lives have changed, many of the things we’ve aways done, the ways we’ve always been, are being challenged…. and it’s almost like God is giving us an opportunity to embrace this, and to sit with Him, and to dig in and really discover who He has made us to be…. completely stripped down.
I’ll bet you’ll wonder why I selected the picture I chose for this blog post? ?
It was a behind the scenes shot from a photo shoot that we did for a magazine several years ago. It took place in an old, historic auditorium, and I had to stand in to get the lighting right before we brought our model in.
…And do you know how uncomfortable it made me to have to stand there on a stage, in front of a microphone, and in front of a camera??? It’s so silly, but it was SO HARD. I squirmed like crazy, and I thought, “this is SO NOT ME, it’s so NOT something I would ever do!” And there weren’t any people there other than a few of us who were working on the shoot! ?
Isn’t it interesting how we sometimes decide these kinds of things for ourselves? How we can hinder our own-selves so much… and sometimes we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
Stripping away not an easy process for many of us….
In fact, at times, I’ve found myself trying to grasp for my “old ways of being”….
But God’s not going to let me get away with that, I can tell He’s nudging me along my way….. ?
Because He’s getting me somewhere. ☀️?
And this life is not a long and pointless, mundane, dry and drab kind of journey…
It’s a journey that brings us into more “life” with each step we take by His side.
It’s the kind of journey where, as we walk with Him, we begin to see the colors, we begin to notice all the beautiful things around us, we begin to see the things within us that He put there….things that have been there all along… a once “bland and barren” landscape begins to come to life in our eyes, and in our hearts.
He’s teaching us how to authentically live this life as we walk and talk with Him.
…And discovering “who I am” in Christ is the kind of journey that takes a lifetime to fully discover.
“I am an ambassador for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). I am part of a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people (1 Peter 2:9).”
Thank You, Father. ?
-Heather ?