How do you define yourself?

Since coming back to the States six months ago, I have been telling myself that once I get a job, I’ll be on my way – on to my ‘real’ life, to a paycheck and to success. I’ve been praying and pleading with God for a job, so that I can finally “get on my way” and instead, it feels like I’ve been sent down the longest hallway of torturous waiting. It’s incredibly painful some days to sit and apply for job after job, hoping that one of these will be the one that allows me to get beyond my childhood home allow me to provide for myself. Many times over the last few months I have thought, “This is the time – let’s go, now!” I look at the clock and feel my twenties ticking down. And thirty seconds later I say to Jesus, “Jesus – WHEN? We’ve got to get going! Please give me something.”

A few weeks ago, He did give me something: I heard Him say, “You need to derive your worth from me.” And then I saw it: the past few months (from time to time) have been an agonizing struggle, because I have allowed a job (or lack thereof) to define me. I’ve also used it as the lens through which I see myself and I’ve let it largely take over my identity. I’ve been the girl who doesn’t have it together, the girl who can’t get a job, the girl who used to do something interesting, but look what’s happened to her now! And as a result, many days I beat my head against the wall (or computer screen), trying ot figure out how I can be a better, shinier, wittier, more profound me so that others will think I’m worthy of their job.

And as I consider God Almighty’s kind request to define myself by His terms , I remember John 1:4: “In Him was life and that life was the light of men.” It’s clear that as I have allowed a job to become my identity, my happiness and fulfillment have become subject to that job. Allowing the job (or lack of) define me steals my joy, breaks in on my stride and moves my focus off of Jesus – the real reason I’m alive – and in doing so, I also give up the Fullness of Life that God offers through an identity based upon Him.

My current life story is hardly a singular case of identity theft though; many things present us with opportunities for us to wrap ourselves around and in: titles and positions, significant others, children and past life events to name just a few. In American even, we are bred to take considerable stock in how we each earn a paycheck – it is after all one of the first questions we ask when getting to know a stranger. I hesitate though to believe that God deems a well lived life the same way our culture pushes us to.

Success can’t be determined by where on the corporate ladder you climb or how much money your paycheck delivers – if that were the case, Jesus, as a poor carpenter from a tiny, rural town who for the last years of his life was homeless and lived often from the provisions of friends and family, would be deemed a complete failure. Yet seeing how he was an incredible friend and teacher, served the poor and healed the sick, died for the world, vanquished sin and death and now sits at the right hand of the Father, waiting to return to the world He created to once and for all set it right, I’m going to go ahead and deem his life a success. It wasn’t riches or a specific job that defined him, it was His willingness to live out His purpose, part of which I fully believe was to show us how to live our lives on earth. He never used “carpenter” as His identity, choosing instead, “the Son of God.”.

So as His request for me to derive my identity in Him settles in my mind, I know He’s right. That doesn’t mean though, that I don’t get caught up in dreams and my ability/ inability to achieve them, especially on days when I feel like a dog who’s straining to run when her leash has been tied to a pole. I wonder stubbornly and a little unhappily, if God is trying to starve off my pride and independence in an effort to turn me around, back to Him. I wonder if we’re not going just yet because keeping me in a position of reliance on others forces me to humbly and gratefully accept that I wasn’t designed to be fully independent. Truthfully, I want to shove this refining process off– not just because it’s painful, but because I’ve always wanted to make my own way, accomplish things on my own. A notion which of course is foolish – after all, did I create myself? Did I teach my lungs to take in oxygen and my heart to pump blood? Yeah, I think not. So thankfully, here I am, already in the middle of it. I pray He keeps going, carving out the things that separate my heart from His, knowing that even if I have to sit in my childhood bedroom the rest of my life, living life as close as possible to Him is worth the price.

“For we are God’s handiwork,” Ephesians 2:10 reads, “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Creating each of us for a purpose that only He fully knows and understands, one of the hardest things we can achieve in this life is the ability to shrug off cultural expectations and listen to Him instead of the world around us. Every day is a new battle to remember my identity is declared by God and nothing else, but every time I start to compare myself to others’ time lines and lives, I now remember to pull back and bury my face in His chest. Some days, all we need to know is that we are His and that all the rest will follow.