Identity

I've been sort of a wreck lately.  So much is coming to light for me but as the darkness recedes, I'm blinded with questions.

  I'm probably an over-analyzer.  But I'm a woman.  And I think (hope?) most woman are probably this way.

I've been struggling through a bit of an identity crisis lately.  Although, I wouldn't have named it that before.  I was fighting, but not sure what I was fighting for.

I met with friends on Friday night.  Friends I hadn't seen in twenty years--since sixth grade.  These were girls  I'd played with and now for the first time  women I was having an adult conversation with.  It was a trip.  And it was eye-opening.  Because in their faces, I saw my own reflected back.  The little girl I once was.  And I wondered where she'd gone.  So much has been lost.  The core of who I am.

I know whose I am.  And I know, too, that when it all comes to the end that is all that will matter.  The strain then, is the here and now.  The me, face to face, with Jesus, Him knowing me beneath the false self, beneath  even the me I think I am.

And now it's all shedding.  And I'm straining to hear my name called out.  The name He has given me.

For too long I've let other people identify me.  I've allowed labels to be my identifier.

I've been someone's child, someone's friend, someone's wife.  I've been an alcoholic, bulimic, obsessive-compulsive.

But there's a child inside me who is the me I was created to be. And I want to find her.  And the only way to do that is to allow God to show me who I am in Him.

 "When we reached A.A., and for the first time in our lives stood among people who seemed to understand, the sense of belonging was tremendously exciting. We thought the isolation problem had been solved.  But we soon discovered that, while we weren't alone any more in a social sense, we still suffered many of the old pangs of anxious apartness.  Until we had talked with complete candor of our conflicts, and had listened to someone else do the same thing, we still didn't belong.  Step Five was the answer.  It was the beginning of true kinship with man and God." Twelve and Twelve, p. 57

Source: jupinfamily.blogspot.com via Nicole on Pinterest

How do I even know others if I do not know myself?  How can I see other's from God's eyes, when I can't see myself from His eyes?

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