Who am I?

I am finally coming to terms with the identity crisis that has plagued me since middle school of feeling that I am not what I should be. I have been doing many things for a very long time so that I could avoid that question of Who am I? because I was quite afraid the answer may be that I am not really much of anything. In my blue book, which is full of really good quotes about Jesus there is a section entitled "Who are you?" Perfect. Because I am burdened with all these real and self imposed demands to do something significant and relevant and this sense that no matter what I do it is never ever going to be enough, never enough for me or for the world. I can hear it saying, what did you really accomplish this year? What exactly do you think you are going to do with your life? Do you think that will satisfy you? Do you think its enough? Has anything ever satisfied you? Do you think anyone really loves you? Do you think they would if they know who you really were? But Henri Nouwen says this is why we have to learn to listen to God, not just to talk to him. Because he says

Beloved.

I say tell me who I am and he simply says

Beloved.

Beloved before I was born, beloved after I die, and beloved every second of every day in between. He says, THATS who you are. Whether you can hear it or not, its true. Not beloved if you make your mark on the world or beloved if you change a life or accomplish anything at all, simply beloved. He is the only one who can tell us our identity because he is the only one who knows it. no one else will ever say something to me that answers that question that burns in my soul, and it is not something that I can find on my own no matter how far I look. He really does know us better than we know ourselves. What comfort. Because I am sick of loneliness. I am real tired of that quiet, deep dispair that is covered with a multitude of things. I just want to rest in Him and to stop feeling guilty about free time. I want to listen to the one who will remind me that any second I spend with him is a second spent well, and that if I do nothing else it does not matter at all. If I want to spend 4 hours just being with him and if I need to do that then that is beautiful. And on the other hand if I am busy and life is crazy I want the shalom that knows that still all I am really doing is looking at the cross and being with him and that I can walk through every little moment of my life with him and let him guide me and interact with me through my schoolwork and my classes and my friendships and my commitments.

Our relationship with God liberates us from dependence on our little systems of order and fragile structures of control. The more we give in to Him and the relationship he is drawing us to, the more our identities and significance become his responsibility and knowing him becomes our responsibility. Our only responsibility.

We put on false selves to be more acceptable to the world, but he loves us for who we already are, who we cannot help but be, he loves the selves the world demands us to refine. What a strange and lovely God we have stumbled upon.

Last thing: when we are insecure about out own identities, we create settings that deprive other people of their identities as a way of buttressing our own. Our identities do not have to depend of depriving others of theirs. When they depend only on the fact that we are beloveds of God, loved for ourselves, we can enhance and affirm other's sense of self and respect God's idea of them without imposing our own and see them as indispensable and precious gifts from Him.

(Ideas from Nouwen, Houston, Palmer, and Quoist)