Who am I? That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot recently. In the midst of losing my job, travelling the world, falling in love, trying to break back into the music industry, making some amazing friends and having my heart-broken; my whole life seems to have changed in the past few months and I’ve been left with this question burning on my mind. Who am I?
The way we label ourselves in life is so often based on our circumstance. You might label yourself by your job, your relationship status, or your political party. Maybe you define yourself by the place you grew up in, the family you were born into, the way that you look or the problems you have. But none of these last forever. These labels may do a good job of defining who we are now, but what about when you lose your job? What about when you move away from your family, or your relationship status changes?
For me a big part of my identity comes from the way I look. Most of the time I will have a defining feature or fashion that I have for a particular season of my life. When I was in college I had a multicoloured mohawk, then for uni I had a pony tail, then for a while I tried (unsuccessfully) to bring back the Trilby and now I rock a rather fine beard. While it’s not wrong to care about how you look, the problem for me is that when I don’t have these things I somehow feel like I can’t be myself. I have no confidence without them. Or rather, when I don’t have them to hide behind I have to be myself, and not the guy with an awesome beard, and that scares me.
Being myself scares me, partly because I’m not sure who I am, partly because I think if I find out who I was I (and certainly not other people) wouldn’t like me very much. But yet unfortunately I can’t be anyone else. I can pretend to be someone I am not, I can try to label myself by my looks, career or relationship status; but when they all disappear I’m left feeling like I am now, confused, lost and questioning who I really am.
In the book of Psalms, King David wrote probably one of my favourite passages in the Bible:
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“God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.”
God knows me. The God of the universe, creator of everything and everyone, knows me. There is nowhere I can go where he is not and nothing I hide behind will stop him from seeing me. He formed me and made me the person that I am, he knew me before I’d even lived.
When I first heard this, I found it extremely creepy, scary and disturbing. The idea that someone or something knows me better than myself is a terrifying idea, if I don’t like myself most of the time imagine what God would think of me? Add in the fact that there is literally nowhere I can go to escape him, part of me doesn’t really want to think about the fact God knows me, let alone know him as well.
But the Bible tells us that despite knowing everything to know about us, despite knowing all of our flaws, all of our mistakes, everything we have done wrong; God loves us. The Psalm says that he sculpted us, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. God created us inherently good, and even though we may have made a mess of things and screwed up, we can not lose that. St John said:
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“What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn’t recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he’s up to.”
God calls us his children; he delights in us, and loves us with an unending, unrelenting, all-consuming love.
No matter how we label ourselves, the love that God has for us is still the same. Whether you feel successful or a failure, good-looking or ugly, happily married or have just been dumped; God loves you. He delights in you, he is infinitely interested in every aspect of your life and wants to be with you whatever is going on.
For so long I’ve answered the question “Who am I?” with my circumstance, with the things I am doing in life or the way that I look. But those things can change and even though I think I have them in control, as I’ve found in the past few months, I don’t. But there is one thing that I do know. One thing that can not and will not change, whatever my circumstance, whatever my mood.
Who am I?
I am Loved.
