Shedding My Worldly Identities

One of the challenges to living out of my identity in Christ (child of God, beloved, valued, chosen, treasured) is that I can be so entrenched in my worldly identities.

We all play significant roles in the world. My roles include: father, husband, provider, minister, friend, teacher, etc. Good roles, hopefully, and meaningful! Yet, I seem to have the capacity to put these roles on and cover myself with them, like a blanket, so completely that I become the role. I become entrenched in some or many of the roles so completely that I lose sight of my true inner self. The role becomes "who I am."

I believe this is because we develop these role-identities, to some degree, in order to "be someone." They become part of our false-self protective mechanisms from early on. I don't feel good about who I am, but I receive some positive attention and feedback from getting a good grade, so I will become a "good student." This, in my case, became something to "be." Since being myself was not "working," I might as well try "being" that someone who does receive positive input. I will not only try to do well at school, I will fully become this new identity, this new person, this "good student" personna.

This seems to have carried over, for me, into so many areas of life. I have taken my roles so seriously that they have, in the past, become fully "who I am." In become so fully entrenched in them I literally lost myself. I, who I really am, is then a person with no intrinsic or internal identity. I am merely what I am on the outside. I am no more than the external persons that I am attempting to be.

Thank God that His view of me is so radically different. Thank God that He loves and values the true me, the me that is me without being someone else or doing anything. It has taken much work, faith, and painful experiences to be willing to let go of my external identities (or, at least, to not cling to them so completely). But, in doing so, the wonder of discovering myself valued, loved, and delighted in for who I am is amazingly worth it. Amazingly worth it!

Perhaps most people have never been as entrenched in their external identities as myself. But the joy of being free of this and finding my identity, first and foremost, as a beloved child of the Everlasting Creator is indeed wondrous. How much easier and joyful it is to put roles on (father, minister) without taking on the full weight of this role as an identity. It's a role, but it's not who I am. I want to do it well, but if I don't "measure up" or even if I completely "fail" in some respect, it's simply something that I failed in, something that I can learn from and grow in, it's not the deep shame of "me" being now "a failure."

I may be successful in a role, or not. Either way, my true self is intact. I am, most fully, just who I am, and knowing who I am, it's enough regardless of what has happened to or through me in the world. As someone said, "I am a spiritual person having an earthly experience." Since I am more than anything that takes place in my world, I am free to enjoy who I am and life itself because the "I" that I am is not entrenched in the world.

I am His, now, forever. Not even "I" can change this!

Comments

[Cassandra]

Beautiful post.