Finding my identity

Identity is a big issue for many people. Who am I? A question asked by many. Identity seems so fluid and changes depending on the people we are surrounded by, the circumstances we find ourselves in, and our emotions at that very moment. 

If you were to ask me, "Faith, where do you find your identity?" 
My "good Christian" answer would be that I find my identity in the Lord. I know what He says about me. I know that He loves me. I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I know that I am made in His image. I know that He loves me enough to send His son Jesus to die for me. That would be my "good Christian" answer... not the reality.

I find my identity in the way my children behave or misbehave. I find myself feeling a deep sense of shame when they sin and fall short. I also find myself feeling shame when they are very behaved and yet I am still feeling short tempered with them. 

I find my identity in my lack of ability to keep my home clean. What kind of wife, mother, person am I that I am not able to keep up  with things? My sink always has dishes in it. When waking up in the middle of the night, my room more closely resembles an obstacle course in which in need to slide past my bed then climb over the clothes stacked on the end of my bed. 

I find my identity in the way see myself in pictures or the way my stomach expands out when I sit down. Disgust is the feeling I would describe when seeing myself. 

Today I struggle with finding my identity in my grades. I have a 3.57 GPA... I mostly get all straight "A"s, but this semester I got a "D" in my calculus class. It hurts because to me it shouts "see how stupid you are?" I am anxious and overwhelmed at the very thought that I did so poorly in the one subject that I love and am strongest in. This one D somehow wipes away every good grade, every accomplishment over the last 10 years. It erases everything. I am no longer worthy of others to be proud in me. It hurts. 


I know in my head the truth about how God sees me. I know that I am a child of the most high. I know that God's love for me is not based on earthly things. I know the truth, but my heart does not feel that way. 

That is the problem with finding identity in things of the world. They are fleeting and changing. God alone is unchanging. 

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

1 John 3:1-2 "

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 

 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

Ephesians 2:10 " For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,which God prepared in advance for us to do."

1 Corinthians 15:10 "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me"