Losing your identity

Excuse me while I stray from my usual "Yemeni update" and wax philosophical for a moment.

I used to be quite the blogger way back in the day. That's probably not the only thing I used to do (aka "be") that I've turned away from in recent years. Every now and again someone will recall something from an old blog and comment on how I should do more writing, or make a comment on how I should join another band. But inevitably, faced with a blank screen or a loved but recently mildly scorned instrument, I find myself in the same position yet again: nothing original to say, nothing original to play.

Some people travel through life always learning new things, braving new frontiers, adding words to the lists they use to identify themselves. They're professionals, eccentrics, survivors, conquerors. Sometimes the list is more specific, drilling down to abilities or roles - they're communicators, writers, managers, electricians, professors, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives. I don't suppose that there is anything wrong with these descriptors in and of themselves. But from my life experience I can attest to the fact that sometimes these identities get in the way.

This is not to say that I'm any different. I had my own list too, once upon a time. Musician, writer, political junkie, professional, whatever... I had my identity. And then, along the way, by some great act of mercy, I lost it.

Over the past several years, God has been doing what I can only describe as a systematic stripping away of my identity. The process has left me a little battered at times (maybe more than just "at times"). But it's also resulting in giving me something I never would have known enough to ask for.

Generally speaking, we gain our worth by what we do. It's our ability, or maybe our personality, that sets us apart as someone worthwhile. We gain acceptance and respect by continuing to be what we've identified ourselves to be. To strip that away is to remove from ourselves the very core of our being. It is to rid ourselves of what makes us feel like we have any worth. It is to say, here I am just as I am. I can't be anything else. And in the process of admitting that we are less than perfect, it rids us of the need to be perfect - or, more precisely, the necessity of being perfect that most of us all too readily impose upon ourselves. We no longer have to be someone we're not. And in a strange way, the ability to be a fallen and broken human who is free from a self-made identity results in a freedom that no other identity could possibility afford. (Perhaps this is why God refers to himself as the great I Am.)

I'm not entirely sure where to go with this from here. There is no point I'm trying to make other than the fact that losing your identity is what gives you an identity that can't be stripped away. You are who you are in the sight of God, and you get to be that person only when you let go of the other identities that make you think you can credit yourself for who you are - the things that will fail you at some point and leave you lost when your own abilities fail. But the beauty of the matter is that God loves you beyond measure and he loves the person he created you to be. You don't have to "be" anything else.

I suspect that some of you will shake your heads in confusion or roll your eyes at the content of this note and that's fine. Do with it as you will. But I've shared these thoughts with a few other people over the past several months and I've been surprised at how many times people have come back to me to tell me it's made a big impression on them. So I'm throwing it out there, as personal and philosophical and as full of jagged edges as it is. If you're as jaded or as rough around the edges as I am, perhaps it will make sense to you.