Identity

Last Friday I had a meltdown. A crazy schedule, difficult classes, and some recurring health issues had joined together with a healthy dose of insecurity to create a giant monster designed to kick my butt. And that monster succeeded.

You know those days... the ones where social interactions are just a little off. You did or said something mildly embarrassing. You can’t seem to have a good hair day. You keep feeling weird and out of place. Well, it had been one of those weeks. I was gradually feeling more and more insignificant. Despite my best efforts to regain my confidence (deep down I know the outfit I’m wearing isn’t really a make or break issue!) I was clearly fighting a losing battle.

Friday night I confided in my journal: Sometimes I am just so confused. What is right? What is wrong? I am so insecure, and I know it, and I try to be confident, and I can’t because I have so many insecurities. Is life just one long process of coping?

I shed a few tears and went to bed. Nothing changed.

The next day it was like a switch had flipped. I hung out with friends all night and had a great time. On Sunday I went back to my journal and wrote a little reflection on insecurity. I have found it is a pattern in my life. I tend to fluctuate back and forth between confidence and insecurity as if I have little control over this pattern. After looking at my past experiences with this issue, I feel as though insecurity is something I cannot control or keep from happening. However, I can control what I choose to do about it.

Every time insecurity creeps in, I have a few choices to make. I can allow it to overtake me, believe the lies that I am not good enough, and sink in depression. I can try to make myself feel better by looking nice or seeking out approval. But the only thing that will truly deliver me is to look outside myself and find my identity in Christ.

Focusing on myself feeds insecurity. Intentionally searching for ways to serve others, seeking the Lord in prayer, and holding on to God’s truth and promises is what delivers me from it. 

After I reached this realization, it was like climbing a mountain. The theme “Identity in Christ” kept repeating itself in various ways: speakers, devotions, books, Bible studies. This morning our chapel speaker challenged us to take a look at our motivation. Am I motivated by the approval of man, which is fickle and unreliable, or am I motivated by the love of God which has no end?

Chapel ended with the song “How He Loves.” I’m not really a church-service-weeper but I could not hold back the tears in my eyes. He is jealous for ME! Me? Small, insignificant, failure of a person--me. How He loves me. In that moment I was overwhelmed with the realization that I need nothing else. I don’t need the approval of man. I don’t need to be accepted by my peers. I don’t need a boyfriend to tell me that he loves me. I don’t need to be praised by the people I come in contact with. God’s love is enough for me.

I write this down because I know that I will soon forget it. I will start to feel under appreciated. I will feel ugly. I will feel boring. I will compare myself to other people and wonder why I can’t have that personality or why my hair doesn’t look like hers or why I am so horribly bad at small talk. And when this insecurity creeps back into my life--I know that it will--I will remember the truth that I realized during this battle with insecurity:

God is enough.