[This is mainly directed towards my sisters in Christ…sorry guys.]
So I, like most citizens 16 and older, have a driver’s license. It’s a Colorado license which automatically makes it better and cooler than every other state’s license, but that’s beside the point. It is my identification. It has my full name. It has my hair color—blonde, my eye color—hazel, my height—5’5”, and if you add about fifteen pounds to the weight listed, you have my real weight. All I am is summed up into one bendable, plastic card that says I can go into bars and stay out after midnight. That is all that I am. This is my identity, that’s it…right?
WRONG.
Right now, I want you to take a second and ponder this question as you read it: ‘Who are you?’ Ponder it. Whatever comes to your mind either write it down or just keep it in your actual consciousness. Take a few seconds. Yes, actually answer the question.
What’d you put—most of you probably started out with your name, maybe you put down what activities you do or what ministry you are involved in, maybe you put down that you’re a daughter of the King. Those who put down the last option, you are correct! If you put down your name, let me ask you this—if and when you get married or join the nunnery or a religious order, you change your name—does that change who you are? Names can change therefore your name doesn’t define you. What about activities—well, if you quit, you’re still YOU. Who are you?
In Exodus Chapter 3, Moses is talking to the burning bush about taking on pharaoh and freeing the Israelites, and in verse 14, God identifies himself as “I am who I am”, his nickname being “I AM”. Every single time we answer the question, who are you? We respond with I am ___________. Well, I AM is God, so in order to identify ourselves, we first identify God.
Fact: where we came from is not by our own accord. We had nothing to do with the process of being created therefore we are reliant on someone else. We are dependent on someone else. We are dependent on God. So to answer ‘who are you’, we must answer who is God and more so, who is Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. That is TRUTH—we depend on that. Mark 1:11 (right after the baptism in the Jordan) “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Guess what? Through our baptism, we were adopted by God. He is our Father. We are His children.
Just by being baptized women, we are His daughters, so: You are my beloved daughter; with YOU I am well pleased. Nothing can take that away—no name, no activity, nothing. We are his daughters for all eternity. We are the children of God. We are His anointed daughters, and He wants us as His daughters. 1 John 3:1-2—“See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God’s children now…” God claims us has His beloved children. We are His beloved daughters. God sent His Son into the world to die on a cross so that we could be His children and be reconciled with Him. He is our Father in case you haven’t been paying attention thus far.
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you…”-Jeremiah 1:1.
“You formed my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am [fearfully and] wonderfully made…”-Psalms 139:13-14
Being His daughter means that we are women. Yes, in a discussion on identity, I’m going to say the “W” word. We are women. Before you tune me out completely and/or stop reading, let me ask you—why are we so afraid to admit our womanhood, why are we so afraid to accept and proclaim our beauty and our femininity? It’s who we are. We are women and with that comes beauty and femininity. God created the whole world and everything in it. He created the plants, the animals, and man. The world wasn’t quite perfect yet so He created woman. He saved us for last because we are God’s masterpiece. We are women and He delights in us and has delighted in us since our first moment of existence. He who is beauty himself formed you with his own hands. He came into the world for us—for you! God loves you so deeply and our beauty comes from letting Him love us.
Well…how do we do that? Well, first we learn what it means to be a woman.
As women, we have this desire for intimacy, we have this desire for communion—we want to feel loved and we want to really be loved. That’s a mark of womanhood, we can try to deny it as much as we want but we’re only kidding ourselves. We want to be wanted. Where do we go—the best place is the Lord because He is love and He loves us perfectly. He’s going to give us a desire that’s ultimately going to bring us to Him. However, most of us including myself have looked somewhere else for this desire to be wanted. We’ve looked to material things to fulfill this desire and find our identity.
Identity was a huge struggle and was a much unanswered question for me up until I went on a retreat that Franny Land (still) offers called Capture My Heart in the Fall of 2012. All of high school, I had no idea who I was because when I would try to live out my faith, I was an outcast so instead of persevering I tried to be someone I’m not to be loved and accepted. I found the trade-off: my morals, values, and essentially my soul for a place to sit at lunch. At the start college, I still had no idea who I was so…I actively searched. I was so desperate for approval, desperate for love, desperate to be accepted—because of my past though, I put up so many walls because I was afraid to show people the real me. In my pursuit, I found myself wandering around second floor Clare, Angels Wing. I found (slash God directed me to) Regina Angelorum, and I thought that all of my desperations had been relieved. I finally found a group of women, WOMEN, who saw past the walls and loved the real me. After I was inducted though, I found myself in another hurricane of confusion. I was an Angel. What does that mean? Who am I supposed to be now? I correlated my entire identity with Regina Angelorum and more so the seniors at the time I was inducted (Spring 2011…yeah I've been in for a while). I had no idea who I was as an individual outside of household, and after they graduated that spring, I tried to hold onto them so tightly and find my identity in each of them. I tried to be who I thought household wanted me to be [in reality, they wanted me—as I am, as I was, ME.] I failed miserably at being another and was a mess trying to sort through who I really was. In my pursuit, I found comfort resorting back to old habits. I was broken searching for someone to fix me. A year after I was inducted (Spring 2012), I reached breaking point. I gave up, gave in, and surrendered. I didn’t know where else to go but to Christ. Here's what I discovered:
My brokenness is not who I am.
“I am my beloveds, and His desire is for me”-Song of Songs 7:10
I started letting go of everything. I started surrendering everything because if we want to find out who we are, we have to find out who we are not and we have to let go of everything we are not. I am not the sum of my weakness. I am not a failure. I am not worthless. I am God’s daughter. I am His beloved.
The Lord revealed so much Truth to me because I allowed Him to: the extent to which we trust God is the extent to which He can love us. One more time:
The extent to which we trust god is the extent to which He can love us.
I know that I am loved. I know that I have a purpose. I know who I am because I know who I belong to.
“I am my beloveds, and His desire is for me”-Song of Songs 7:10.
I have a specific purpose on the Earth, and it’s different from each of your purposes. My plan was made for me and only me. So often though, we compare ourselves to each other and criticize ourselves and our sisters in Christ for doing something or not doing something. We are each so different with different talents and are made to fulfill a different purpose.
Remember: “Comparison is the thief of joy”-Theodore Roosevelt
Be who you are. Be who we are. We are women. We are daughters. We have a purpose. Who are you is a very simple question. Note, it’s simple…not easy. Give God the chance to make it simple through a relationship with Him. Use the sacraments—daily prayer time, Mass, Scripture, Confession, Adoration. Ask the Lord to tell you, show you, and guide you…He will: He's really not that hard to hear, you just have to listen.
The extent to which we trust god is the extent to which He can love us.
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LRR
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