Who
are you? “I’m a sports fan”; “I’m a doctor”; “I’m a mother”; “I’m a lawyer”;
“I’m a teenager”; “I’m a kiwi”; “I’m a Christian”; “I’m an Asian”; “I’m a
Maori”; “I’m a Buddhist”.
Sometimes
we identify ourselves through our interests, other times we identify ourselves
according to our age, our ethnic background, through our children, or through
our income. Other times we identify ourselves through our professions or our
professions of faith. So who are you anyway?
Think
about your own identity as you listen to your thoughts. Who are you?
We so
easily get distracted as we travel the pathway to the identity we associate
with ourselves that we may not even know what got us to this point? Have you
ever really thought about who you are and what led you to getting to where you
are today? Did you choose to become what you identify with or is it something
that you were influenced into becoming?
We
all have something that we identify with, be it our faith, our social status or
race. But what is it that truly defines us?
I
feel as though I have had many identities as my life has changed dramatically through
the years. In high school I was a Christian and I was a violinist. From 1996 –
1998 I was going to be a counselor and in 1998 I also ‘became’ a jazz singer. From
1999 until March 2000 I was going to be a fashion designer. But when life
turned to custard for me in 2000 after 6 lots of neurosurgery in 8 days, and I
had to move home for the long term, I no longer knew who I was.
I
had 8 years that followed 2000 where I didn’t have the cognitive function, due
to recovery from neurosurgery and a ‘fogged’ brain because of the amount of
morphine I was taking, to think about my identity. I just ‘was’. However, during
these years there was always one thing I identified with, and that was whose
child I was.
In
physical terms I am the daughter of my parents but that isn’t what I’m talking
about. During these past 12 years I have always known that I am a beloved child
of God. Even though there have been so many changes over these years in the way
I look, in the way I can think, in what I can and can’t do, there has always
been this constant to give me my sense of identity.
God’s
love for me has always been there and I have always felt a strong sense of
identity because of it. I haven’t been a regular attender of church over all of
these past 12 years as for many years I couldn’t focus on anything let alone
listen to a speaker. I also couldn’t sit through anything for any length of
time because of my back pain. What has been a constant however, has been God’s
love. Fortunately that love isn’t conditional on church attendance or anything
else.
The
fullness of that love is so far-reaching that it has reached into my weakness,
and at times despair, over the years. Fortunately that love is also enough to
give me a full identity.
I
know that in God’s love I am whole. I know that God in His love has a great
plan for my life. I know that God is going to work all that has happened to Me for
a good purpose. I know that God in His love will give me the strength to work
through whatever life throws at me. I know that in God’s love I am complete. And
I know that in God’s love I am declared innocent. I know that I am myself in
God’s love and that is enough.
To
me the greatest thing of all about God’s love is that it is constant. What I do
in my life, my appearance, what pain I feel, what people are in my life, what
possessions I own, will continue to change. However, God’s love for me has never
and will never change.
