Who I Am

My mother and I talk on my car ride to work every single day. It's strange to think that she once was where I was, mothering her first child, figuring out the day-to-day routine. She always seems to have life under such control. 

"Mom, what would you tell yourself when you were my age?" I asked. 

"Let's see, by the time I was your age, I had four kids so ..."

Four kids? Geez, and here I was trying to wrap my head around having one!

"I don't think there was anything I could have told myself at your age that would have made much difference," she continued. "But when I was younger, I would have told myself to love me more."

By that, she explained, that she spent her entire life doing for others, whether it was for her sister as the older child, or her mother who struggled with alcoholism, or her husband, or her children. 

"I never discovered what I liked, or what I wanted to do, and I only took care of myself because I knew I had to be here for you guys," she admitted.

If I'm honest with myself, I struggle with some of that too, but in a different way I guess. I struggle to think of Christina as "me first." I'm a mom, and a wife (maybe the order of those should be changed), but my identity is so wrapped up in the roles and responsibilities I assume. 

Society is the same way. When you meet someone new, the first question is usually 'What's your name?' but shortly thereafter, you're almost surely asking 'What do you do? Where do you work?'

That used to be me. Then I became a mom, and now motherhood eclipses my work. But what eclipses motherhood?

In the Bible, when Moses asked God who he should tell Pharoah sent him, God answered: "I Am Who I Am." Isn't that profound? He didn't need any roles to define Himself. He didn't even need a name. He simply is.

No one else in the entire universe can say that. We struggle to define who we are, daily.

I turn 30 later this year, and I thought that somehow I'd have a better grip on my own identity, but life changes, and heck, I'm changing.

There's only one thing I can say for sure: that my identity is found in Christ. My hair changes, my attitude changes, my hormones change, my name changes (depending on who is calling me), but Christ is the solid rock on which I stand.

And in Him, my identity is secure. I never have to wonder who I am.

I am His.