It was a lazy summer Saturday morning I found myself drawn to a book that I had previously discarded with the accusation of being irrelevant as I had trudged through the first chapter or so. But this Saturday, I found myself opening it somewhere in the middle, and reading the chapter, that the page fell open on. This chapter was about tearing down walls, and this time the book was no longer irrelevant, but speaking directly to me. The words were leaping off the page and speaking incisively into deep parts within me. As I read further, I found myself asking God the question I had been turning over in my mind for the past month or so – ‘Who am I?’
This new exploration into the topic of identity began as we started to write a production on this very theme for Pure Creative Arts. As we explored the topic deeper, I found myself praying with the team that we would not write some theoretical production on the topic, instead:
“Start with us, God, show us deeper layers that cover up who we really are, speak to us,” I prayed, “so what we can bring through this production is full of authenticity.”
So this particular Saturday, I found myself sitting in a secluded and sunny patch in our garden, looking up at the sky, and the trees that grew up towards it, and asking God that question – ‘Who am I?’ The first response that shot into my mind was, “Nobody.” I knew immediately that this was not God’s answer. I pushed it away.
Next, I heard God’s response to that question: “Mine,” all encompassing, with no need to add to or subtract from it.
But now, God’s Message… the God who made you in the first place… the One who got you started:
“Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called your name. You’re mine.”
– Isaiah 43:1 (MSG)
And I began to imagine who I would be if I fully believed that truth in every aspect of my life, with every part of me – that all I am, all I was, all I needed to be was His… How would that change how I lived my life? How I responded when I was hurt? How I interacted with people I thought didn’t like me? I began to see myself in a whole new way and I began to see afresh how differently life could look if I really believed this truth.
You see that first response I heard had shown me that there was a lie I was believing about my identity. Little did I know that this very question was the beginning of unpicking some stuff in me that had settled deep down, and I had built layers around and never actually got to the bottom of. As I continued to read this chapter about walls, I began to ask which walls I had in place that needed to be brought down… “God, where are there areas of shame and fear? God show me.”
I began to think through different situations I had walked through: ones that had been painful, times I had been hurt, and how those situations had provoked certain responses, or walls within me. How pain had begun to shape me and how I related to people and situations. Did I want pain to shape me?
My response to this lie was to feel the need to ‘be somebody;’ to try to prove myself in some way rather than leaning into His truth. I had been asking the wrong question. Instead of trying to prove who I am, whether to myself or anyone else, I needed to be asking “Whose am I?”
Whose am I? When I ask that question, my perspective changes. It becomes about Him rather than about me. Rather than me trying to fill the gaps I felt with my own human effort, I looked to Him. I realised that I had been trying to prove I was something in certain relationships and situations in response to that lie. Almost finding my place in what I meant to a person, how they thought of me or how important I was to them. I realised this was driven by my need to compensate for that lie and ‘be someone’. And yet, I didn’t need to do any of that at all.
I was then reminded of a word a friend visiting from Australia gave me a few weeks before. She said, “You know Tamsin, God sees you, a little like you see and enjoy your daughter: He loves your constant chatter, your sweet bubbly outgoing woo… He is not annoyed by it… He loves it.” I needed to stop apologising for myself but just be me. If you stop to think for a moment, how often does your behavioral response actually relate to a lie you are believing about your identity? What would it look like if we could live in the truth of the fact that we are His? Enough. Total. Complete in Him.