Identity Crisis

Whoa wait! Who am I again?

That's the question that often comes to mind when I am in the middle of day to day life. It's in the moments when no big accomplishments seem to be propelling me forward, and I am in the heat of the endurance race of life that I lose sight of my value and forget who I am.

I start striving. I start comparing. I start whining. I start wandering.

It's in this plateau of life that I seem to forget my purpose because growth slows and everything seems to be a grind.

Seriously, I start flailing around life in attempt to keep from drowning in the depths of the mundane.

My inner self begins this narrative: I need to be accomplished. I need to be popular. I need to start something new. Who can I serve? What can I start? When will the next big surge of life come and push me forward?

Then as all my value seeking efforts fail me, I realize that I am indeed in an identity crisis which leads me to the my initial question ‘who am I?’

Seeing that the question can't be filled with the external because it is ever changing sending me through success and failure, busy seasons and slow seasons, times of being surrounded with friends and times of being alone I have to to look to something more.

I have to look to the unchanging. To the Creator of my soul. To the One who tells me I am wonderfully and fearfully made. The One who tells me I am loved and redeemed. The One who tells me He has brought me into underserved grace so that I may share in His glory. The One who knew I wasn't enough but didn't let that stop Him from dying and being enough for me.

What I'm saying is that when I get tossed about on every thought and action leading me seeking my value and my worth, I have to look to Jesus because, for me, who I am rests in who He is in me.

So how about you? Do you go through seasons of life that try you and make you feel unimportant and small?

If so, perhaps focusing on the love the Creator has for you will help you regain your identity and allow you to rest in the slower less extravagant seasons of life.

Reclaim your identity this week and live every moment like it’s big!

When you don't have the answer

Have you ever felt that to acknowledge a problem that you first have to have the answers?

I know I have. When I don't understand, when I can't see the silver lining, when senselessness makes no sense in no way, I often ignore problems,  stay silent, or divert to things I feel like I understand.

The truth is I feel helpless in the face of doubt because I have often felt the pressure of making things right and believing that the world in general is good.

The  more vulnerable I have become,  the more I have realized that the world is full of problems that I don't understand. It is so easy to sweep it under the rug or even play the devil's advocate.

But today I want to say, I don't understand. I don't understand the police shootings and brutality. I have watched the videos, and I don't understand. I don't know what it is like to be in the black community. I don't know what it is like to be a police officer. I don't know what happens in the moments from life to death. I don't know. I am not going to pretend that I know. I don't.

All I know is that lives have been lost, pain and voids have been left for family members to deal with, and our communities are left more broken.

I don't have the answer, but I can surely see there is a problem. People are hurting, and I hurt for them.

I can't fix the problem,  but I will work to find out how to be a solution where I am and how I can.

What about you? Would you be vulernable this week and acknowledge even the things you don't understand and don't have the answers to?



Maybe this is what I am feeling ~ He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. - MLK JR (thanks to my sister Maria Morris for sharing this)