Identity in Brokenness

   

  Since my earliest recollection I have loved children, and dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Another of my earliest recollections is planning and dreaming. At 7 I had drawn on graph paper the blueprint for an orphanage, clinic, school, and soup kitchen. I wanted to be all things to everyone.

     I have been able to work with kids throughout my life, helping at home with my siblings, babysitting, and nannying. I have been blessed with exposure to adoption and ministry to the vulnerable since I was very young.

     It is intriguing to me looking across the things that God has done in my life so far. Being able to be introduced to the world of HIV+ when I went to Ukraine the first time, seeing the pain in the eyes of the war-weary teens when I went to Ukraine the second time, and then finally getting to know the kids in Bolivia.

     I went to Bolivia thinking that I was going to be a hero. I daydreamed of being like the heroes of the faith that I have read about for years. Instead, God continued to work in my heart and lead me on a journey of realization that God alone is the hero of this story.

     God taught me a lot while I was there. He showed me my pride, my naivety, my impatience, my lack of love, my judgmental spirit. He showed me how very dependent I was upon myself.

     I dealt with a lot of emotions that I attributed to missing home. Now, back in the States, I realize that lots of what I was dealing with was less about missing home than about anxiety, and maybe even some depression. My identity, as I had known it, was being challenged.

    All of my life, I have been needed and necessary - As the new Tia in the orphanage, I didn't speak the language, I didn't know the routine, I didn't know the children. I wasn't necessary, I didn't even feel wanted a lot of the time. I felt incapable, ashamed, and alone.

   The problem with this, as God is helping my to realize, is that my identity was coming from how my actions were reacted to by other people, and in some ways, based in whether or not I had children, or a husband to love me. 

     God has created humans to crave relationships, fellowship, and love - it is a good and natural desire. 

"Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."

-Westminster Shorter Catechism- 

   However, God created every human being for that purpose. He created us to be known and to know Him. He uses our fellow man in an important way in our lives as well. Our brains need us to receive love, kind words, gentle, safe, and loving touch - when a child doesn't receive that love at an early age it changes their brain, it changes how the process and think about themselves and life in general. When someone experiences trauma and loss, their brain is making new paths of thought that directs emotions, words, actions, and how we process life and relationships around us. 

    An estranged father pulls away when his daughter tries to hug him, she grows up and lives her life fearing that there is something wrong with her, that she is ugly, that she smells bad - the reasons can sound childish, and yet they impact the very core of her identity. She fears vulnerability because if anyone finds out who she really has behind her masquerade they will not want to be around her. Or in a similar instance, an absent parent makes empty promises and yet still says, "I love you," the impact of continually being let down, of feeling rejected in the midst of empty words, causes the child to become and adult who feels that they have to pretend to be someone that they are not. They never trust that others really want to be around them, it is an ingrained identity of lacking in any innate value. 

    A little boy throws a fit, screams and yells, bites and hits - the world says that he is a brat, they scowl when he walks into the room - They don't see the child that is crying out to be seen and heard, they don't realize how frustrating it is for him that his cleft palate makes it difficult to understand. They don't see the bleeding wounds on his heart every time a caregiver talks over him or tells him to be quiet, they don't see the ache that he has to be kissed on the cheek, hugged close, and played with. They don't see the identity that is forming that his words have no value, that the "cute" kids are the only ones worthy of love. 

   Consider the child who has been moved from their biological parents into a foster home, and then moved from foster home to foster home - chains of connection begin to be developed and then broken off with foster parents, friends in school, teachers, etc., They begin to harden, to guard themselves from connection at all so that they don't get hurt again. They don't want to trust, because to have it broken one more time feels like it will break them completely apart. 

   That brokenness might be a constant struggle throughout that child's life. On their own, they are destined to a cycle of brokenness as what they have learned in childhood is bestowed upon their own children. Only God is able to stitch the pieces back together and bring beauty from the ashes. When mankind's identity is wrapped up in other people, or even in himself, his identity will crumble to pieces. God needs to be our identity. Knowing that our past doesn't define us, that God loves us completely and has made a way for us to know Him and become His child. 

  "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?"

-Romans 10:14-

       Lately, God has been working in my heart and revealing how I have allowed my past to shape me. How I have relied on how many friends I have, how many pieces of "wise advice" I can give a week, how many times people comment that they enjoy being around me, etc., to give me value. God has been pointing out to me the way that I reject His sovereignty in my life, the way that I doubt His ability to love me. 

    God has loved me immensely, He has preserved me from a lot of things that I could have experienced and been forced to deal with in life. He has opened my eyes to the ways in which He has prepared me to love without holding back, because it is "better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."  Through the hurts that I have experienced and witnessed, He has shown me the power of love. 

"To love another person, is to see the face of God."

 - Jean Valjean - (Victor Hugo - Les Miserables) 

     If I may adjust that quote a bit, to be truly loved by another person is to see the love of God in a new way. God has poured out His love upon us, and He commands us to love one another - this is a different kind of love than that which the world has, it is a love that is empowered by the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. It is the kind of love that gives life, and binds up the wounds of the brokenhearted so that they can know and be known by the sovereign God of the universe. 

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?  Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” 

- 1 John 3:16-18 -

“This is how God showed his love among us:  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love:  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ”  

- 1 John 4:9-11 -

“This is how God showed his love among us:  He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love:  not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ”  

-1 John 4:9-11-

“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other.  Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.  Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” 

- 1 John 4:7-8 -

“Live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” 

- Ephesians 5:2 -

     Brothers and sisters, we have been so greatly loved by God - we are no longer our own, we belong to the King of Creation, and He has called us to love others as He has loved us. This is a call to action, a call to love the unloved, to be a balm of blessing and comfort to the aching souls - and when it feels like our world is crumbling around us, we are called to lift our eyes above this temporary and fading wasteland and to remember that our home is in a better country, and that is where our citizenship lies. 

     I am thankful for the misshapen identity that I have experienced, by the grace of God, it has helped me to see more clearly the hurt in others and to have greater compassion for them - He has shown me how His great love for me is unchanging, and even as I struggle to believe that, He continually reminds my heart of that truth. Calling me back to Him, like Hosea did for Gomer - calling back the unfaithful and broken woman, summoning me to His side and pouring out His grace upon me. 

    He has equipped each of His saints for the good works that He has laid out for them. We are called to pour ourselves as fragrant drink offerings, not as means to earn our salvation, or greater favor with God - no, nothing that we do will change the love that God has for us - no wrongs, nor right will redeem us, but only the blood of Christ.  

   In my broken conception of what makes me valuable, God has brought me through a time of feeling less than valued to teach me of where my value truly lies - and that is in Him. 

"

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

- Romans 8:38-39 -

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,"

- Hebrews 12:1 -

The following Psalm has been so powerful in my life over the past 18 months. Indeed, we have a beautiful inheritance in Christ Jesus our Lord! 

 -  Psalm 16 -

"Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;

    I have no good apart from you.”

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,

    in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;

    their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out

    or take their names on my lips.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;

    you hold my lot.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

    indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;

    in the night also my heart instructs me.

I have set the Lord always before me;

    because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;

    my flesh also dwells secure.

For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,

    or let your holy one see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life;

    in your presence there is fullness of joy;

    at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

     We have been overwhelmingly loved, we are not our own, we are bond servants of Christ. This life is not about a comfortable retirement, or a home in sunny Florida (though that's not evil in itself, it simply cannot be our main goal and our driving force.) For us as believers, this world is not our home. As citizens of a better kingdom, our job here is to live devoted to the gospel, devoted to loving others, and dying to ourselves daily for the sake of Christ and those around us. 

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

- John 13:35 -