Identity Crisis

A mindset lingers around everyone. A mindset that a person engages with on a daily basis to define who they are and how they live. Each person has their experiences that have shaped them and molded them into the person they are today, even if that person has to take on different faces around certain people. Each person has an identity with something.

Growing up, I wanted to please my parents, especially my father. Can you say "Daddy's girl"? My dad loved sports. So I loved sports. My dad loved baseball. So since only boys can play baseball, I loved softball. I had to be the best. I worked hard every practice. I lifted weights to strengthen my arms to throw faster and to swing the bat harder. It was all to please my dad. I wanted my identity to be found in a place where I knew I would get recognition from him. Don't get me wrong, I loved playing, but I allowed softball to identify who I was.

Looking back, I wonder what I would be like if something was different in my childhood. Like that movie with Ashton Kutcher, where he is able to alternate present realities by changing a decision in the past. Well, I have always been active and athletic. As a little girl, I was more prone to play outside in the dirt with trucks and boys than to be inside playing with Barbie dolls and interacting with other little girls. I hated dresses and shorts were more comfortable anyway. Who can climb a tree or hop a fence in a skirt? Because of this, other little kids, especially the girls, called me a "tomboy". I hated it. I just wanted to push them in the dirt ruin their little dresses. Yet, to me, it became my identity. I didn't care anymore about what people thought, except I did. So I stuck with my identity and became the best tomboy ever.

But it impacted me more deeply than I realize. Because after this, it molded who I became. When offered a barbie doll, I acted out of assurance that I was supposed to hate dolls since I was a tomboy. If only that had been different.

But it makes me realize that this mindset impacts me on a deeper spiritual level. People would consider me a "sinner." I look at myself as "a sinner." So when it comes to sin, I just feel hopeless, because I think it's inevitable that I will be failing in that area. But the same thing is that there is a standard of perfection coming from the Church.

It's a lose-lose situation. I'm a sinner, yet I have to be perfect. But that's not what the Bible meant. And that's what I hate. Our righteousness and our identity is supposed to be found in Christ and His sacrifice for us. How can I try to fix myself and my sins, when Jesus criticized the Pharisees for that very thing? Have we as Christians missed the point of the gospel? Is it merely about getting in heavenly? NO. It's about becoming the people God created us to be. We are supposed to be in perfect relationship with Him. That only comes through Christ, and not through my efforts to purify myself.

Where is my identity? Is it in Christ or in my sin? In my struggles or in the Messiah?