If you want to discover who you’re not, just attend a women’s church event. “Do you have kids?” No. “Are you married?” No.
The “no’s” still ring in my ears from the list of times I’ve been forced to answer these questions. I used to pack them nicely in the bubble wrap of sweet reasonings and playful shoulder shrugs and words that pulled the topic in different directions to make the questioner feel a little more comfortable with my “no.” To not make her feel bad for asking a question that she assumed would be met with “yes” nods followed by a descriptive list of my husband’s job and our children’s names.
Now, I toss out the fragile answer naked of any fluffy coating to catch it’s fall. I simply watch it shatter on the floor of the investigator’s mind. I spit out the word and hold my mouth in a confident straight line. Maybe I’ve become more comfortable with the answer or maybe I’m being stubborn by withholding something I know someone wants, which I tend to do. Perhaps it’s time to book a counseling session. Maybe?
If I know what I’m not, that leads me to wonder what I am. When I was a little girl, long blonde tangled hair draped down my back and an imagination bursting with colorful ideas of where I’d live and what I’d do, I never questioned who I was. The worldly building blocks of my foundation hadn’t been stacked to offer me a false identity quite yet, and the truth was scrambled somewhere in an adult sentence spoken in Sunday school that God had made me. I was knitted together in my mother’s womb. Knitting drew my mind to a lumpy ball of yarn on an old lady’s lap, and I won’t even pretend to remember what I thought a womb was, probably something similar to a caterpillar’s cocoon. It’s no wonder I was so confused about who I was.
Identity. How can something so valuable and precious be so easy to lose? And once it’s lost, where would I begin to look to find it? Society says to look inside myself. Eaw. Once I close my eyes and focus on myself, I cringe. It’s a scary place, myself. I can’t ask my parents. I’ve learned that those words can’t be trusted. They once told me I was perfect and could do anything. Only a few years into adulthood told me that was a complete lie.
If you’re married, you’re a wife. If you have children, you’re a mom. If you have parents, you’re a daughter. These terms are descriptive and beautiful and hold value that runs deep enough to be accepted as a firm foundation of one’s life. These labels might even be worthy of being called a purpose. But what happens when that sacred identity you cling to is snatched from your white knuckled fists? There was a point when I wondered, if I’m not a wife, then what am I? If a mother loses her only child, is she still a mother? She’s not mothering, but her heart had already been shaped into that role, and to ask it to succumb to the robbery would be cruel. When parents meet the end of life, is a daughter still a daughter? These are just words, you say. Semantics.
Where does my value come from if the object of my definition disappears? If a face isn’t gazed upon, is it worth anything at all? If eyes aren’t met, do they even matter? If I have nothing on this earth, do I even belong here? Imagine your life without the one person or title that’s listed on your invisible nametag.
I’ve sometimes wondered how someone who doesn’t believe we’re crafted by a creator finds value in a human life. To the “unbeliever,” if a life was taken unjustly, it would be wrong because the person’s family and loved ones had something, someone, stolen from them. That’s evil and blatantly wrong. But, what if that person had not one known family member left, not one person who loved them, not a job or bank account or obligations waiting to be satisfied. If no other human was present to call that person valuable, then are they not?
Or, would it be that their value was in the potential of what they might one day choose to do, someone they may decide to love, or a way in which they’d find to contribute to society? It would be that the hopeful pile of “what ifs” and potential was killed without consent. That only brings me back to the beginning of my circle where people are worthy because of what they do or who they’re with. None of it makes sense. To me, at least.
The orphan. A baby without any living parents. Why does the human heart melt toward that, causing volunteers, missionaries and people of all walks to nurture those without families? It must be that there’s something to this whole knitted together thing. Some sort of intrinsic value must be instilled in each being. Then of course, you wonder from whom and why? All of these thoughts swirl in my mind, and although I’ve had the knowledge since I was a kid that I’m created and I’m loved by the creator, it took years to truly accept it. It took having what I thought was my identity stolen from me, leaving me floundering without those hollow building blocks of a foundation or comfort of a label that pleased the questioners.
I had to cling to the one who said I was made with a purpose and eternal value. I was made in an image of someone far greater than myself. No matter who walked out of my life, or what job I lost or what dream never came to fruition, I somehow had value and worth without any of that. How amazing this would have been to fully grasp when I was younger and the adults tried to tell me. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have felt like my own body was being ripped apart each time someone abandoned or rejected me. Maybe if I’d never let those things become ingredients to my being, it wouldn’t have hurt so badly when they were taken. Now I know.
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” Psalm 73:25.
It’s true. Finally, after years of struggling and wondering why I felt so worthless, I get it. I know it. There is a God who made me and loves me and I have value because of that, and it can never be stolen.
