What's your identity?

What is your identity? How would you describe who you are and what makes you the unique person you are?

Would you start with a list of your job qualifications? I heard a job search expert say on a morning show that even if you aren't getting paid you can still define yourself by your skills..."I am a painter. I am a stock broker. I am a teacher." Those qualities are who you are as a person.

Really?

I recently joined a small 'bible group' of ladies on Sunday night. We meet after the little ones are in bed (or on their way with daddy) and visit, share our troubles and triumphs, fears and dreams as well as study a Christian based book. When we first met one friend asked the group to tell a little about their identity so everyone could get to know them. Most of the women had never met before. It was interesting to see what people shared in an attempt to define themselves in a brief amount of time. I was surprised that most of us said the same thing though we all had different backgrounds and present situations in our life.

I shared that I saw myself as a supporter. I have supported my husband for the past 12 years through graduate school and now his doctorate program, encouraging him and being his rock during stressful times. I have supported him through job changes that effected our entire family. I have supported my family by making a choice to be the primary caregiver for our children and putting any career dreams I had on a back burner while they are little. I have supported my children in helping to raise them with the values and character traits Nate and I want them to have. So....I am a supporter - is that my identity? But what about me...just me with no one else in the picture?

I get this magazine once a year from the college I graduated from that highlights all the great professions their graduates have entered. Every year I read this magazine I get depressed looking at these women who graduated from the same school I did and seeing what wonderful things they are accomplishing in the world. Is that their identity?

Then last night I read the first day of my new bible study "No Other Gods" and this is what it said..."I guess I've always had this wistful notion that if I were married I wouldn't struggle so much with who I am. But it seems that women everywhere are caught in an endless pursuit to discover their identity. And it's not just people in their twenties and early thirties. According to many of my friends who have lived just a little longer, finding identity can be a lifelong battle, a continuous cycle. Husbands don't seem to solve. Kids apparently don't do it. Careers fall short..."

So where do we find our identity and what does it look like when we do find it?

Feminists will try to tell you that as a woman your identity is being a strong woman who can do all things without the help of a man. But as much as I agree with women's rights (to an extent) my identity is not found in being a strong woman...because sometimes I'm not so strong and sometimes I don't want to lean on myself!

The news anchor job guru will tell you your identity is found in your skills but what happens when those skills aren't needed anymore or you get a little rusty in your skills or for goodness sake if you get tired of using those skills and want to change them? I think of my dad who was a teacher all of his life and is now retired and totally embracing a new side of himself as an artist!

The mother in me wants to think my identity is found in being the best mom to my kids but what is going to happen when these precious children grow up and move on...will my identity be lost?

My bible study is all about confronting our modern-day idols. What is a modern day idol? It's all those things that I mentioned above that we follow to the extent of believing they make us who we are. Our children, husbands, careers, houses, cars, money, physical images. In themselves not bad; but, when we make them so important as to define who we are and we make our lives evolve around them then they have become our idols.

The Israelites wanted a king in old testament days. They approached their prophet Samuel and begged him for a king to rule over them. "And the profound reason they wanted a king over them was so they could be like all the other nations." "The Israelites already had an identity. An amazing one at that - they were the chosen people of God! But as they began to forsake God and follow other gods (their modern day idols), they lost sight of what they had and, most important, who they were."

Wow! This got me thinking...

1Peter 2:9-10 "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."

This is our identity.

"For those of us seeking individualism and distinctiveness, chasing our lusts will only make us like everyone else, with little identity at all."

All of my modern day idols (my husband, children, appearance, popularity) that I try to make up my identity...they are fleeting and can quickly be taken away. And then what? In spite of sounding like a Christian cliche I am truly going to try and embrace my identity in Christ above all else. In Deuteronomy 7 and 14 it says the Lord chose them to be His treasured possession...I am God's treasured possession. Even when I lose patience with my kids, nag my husband, slip up and gossip to a friend, get jealous of someone else's 'things', critique my body too much...I am God's treasured possession.

That is who I am. That is my identity! What is yours?