Identity Crisis: God Made No Mistake Creating You

All over the world today, we constantly see articles, posts, photos, yoga classes and meditations that are all dedicated to finding ourselves or defining ourselves. This is such an appealing notion in such a self centered world. One of the things I noticed when I first moved away from home, went to school, and started working was that teachers, students, employers, managers, and bosses all pay attention to who you are on the surface, or what your ‘brand’ is.

This explains why our world is so obsessed with physical beauty and social media. In order to get jobs, or references or even volunteer opportunities, you have to market yourself and a huge part of marketing is making things look appealing. It also helps us understand why we try so hard to make our personalities appealing and likeable.

I was never the type of person to have a brand or to put myself into a defined box; I was just me. I didn’t know this about myself until high school. We did a project in English class where we had a paper bag and we covered the outside with things about us that we share and on the inside we put things that are about us but most people don’t know. When our projects got returned to us my friends all had notes from the teacher saying that they were nice or kind ect. When I saw mine it said, ‘you are an intriguing person.’ This was the first time I realized that I didn’t really fit the ideas that most people have of a young Christian woman.

A year later in careers class we took personality tests. When we took the animal test to define whether we were a retriever, an otter, a lion or a beaver, half of the class were retrievers, half were otters, one person was a beaver and I was a lion. After we took the Myers-Briggs personality indicator and I got a type that was the rarest for women and the only person in the class who had the same type was the male teacher.

I started to wonder if God had made a mistake or that I was sinning by being who I was naturally. I grew up in a very conservative church. The areas for women to be involved are very limited. As a person who wasn’t comfortable in the babysit, or teaching Sunday school to young children, there was no place for me there. I started to wonder what kind of God would create my personality one way, with strengths in areas like academics and public speaking, but then create rules that told me that I could not use those gifts.

It was difficult to have any role models as the faithful and devoted women in my church did fit into that model with their personalities and talents. They were amazing wives and mothers who served in Sunday school and the babysit and were amazing at it. This made me think that by being myself I was sinning, and that I needed to fight my natural gifts and become someone else. I believed that by trying to become this defined Christian Woman I was following Luke 9:23 “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

The truth is that there is more to that verse. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?”

It has never gotten easier because everywhere I go, to school or to work, there is an expectation of who I will be based on my position or how I look, that I don’t fit into. My brand doesn’t make sense. When discussing my future at work with my managers, they are always telling me to be myself, and then listing off things that I should be that they are assuming is me. By actually being myself, I have realized that they don’t really mean it. They want me to have my own flavour but still fit into what they believe I should be.

God doesn’t do this. God doesn’t want us to have a brand or to be defined how our church of friends or family think a young Christian girl should act. He wants us to deny ourselves and follow him. This includes using our natural God-Given talents and not hiding them to become someone else.

Peter 4:10-11 says “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.”

God gifts us in many ways. There are obvious ways like teaching and serving, but then there are ways that we may not even consider gifts from God.

1 Chronicles 15:22 says “Chenaniah, chief of the Levites, was in charge of the singing; he gave instruction in singing because he was skillful.”

This is such a simple verse, but it tells us so much about who God is. He knows exactly what he has gifted you with and he wants you to sue it every day to praise him. If you bury them and do not use them and grow them you are like the third man in the parable of the talents.

The full parable is Matthew 21:14-30, but I want to focus on verses 28-30 where the master condemns the servant who buried his talent.

“So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This is very harsh. In a way it almost scared me into being myself and not denying who I was to fit into who people wanted me to be.

How does this fit in with the book of Esther? Well Esther was called to do something that most likely wasn’t very popular among the Jews. The Jews were in captivity and of course did not like the king of Persia. In addition, Esther was basically taking part in a beauty pageant and what some people believe was a sort of sexual contest to win the heart of the king. The odds were certainly not in her favour as any woman who was not chosen was then kept as a concubine. I am sure she dealt with a lot of ridicule in doing what God had called her to do. I believe it would be very difficult for a woman to believe that she was to use her talent of beauty in that way. Thankfully she followed God’s will and the Jewish people were saved. If she had not done so I am sure that the Jews would have been saved in another way, but she would have not been using her God given talents in the way he wanted her to use them. Our focus verse points this out to us.

“If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” (4:14)

I encourage you to completely lose your idea what you believe Christian women should be like. Focus on what your talents and gifts are, what you are passionate about, and how that aligns with God’s will. The most important part of all of this is to spend time alone with God so he can guide you. Without his guidance, you will never be happy being yourself. You must deny yourself and follow him with everything you have in order to truly find yourself.

Lastly, do not be intimidated by the women on social media or the women who you know who have an amazing brand and seem to have everything figured out. They may always be perfectly pulled together and be successful in everything they do but that life will never lead to true joy and the only way to truly be yourself is to lost yourself for Christ because he knows who you are better than yourself and he knows how to use you and your gifts better than you can ever imagine.