Why do we struggle as humans with our identity so much?
I feel like this past year or two has been a giant struggle with my identity. I want so badly to be who my friends, my parents, my coworkers, my boss, and my professors want me to be. I want to be an adult, but also I want to finish out my last semester of college, simply being in college. I want to please everyone, in every way, in every part of my life, and when it doesn't work? I come home and lay in bed and think of all of the ways in which I haven't been "enough."
There was an incident yesterday that brought my insecurities boiling to the surface once again. I felt like I had let a lot of people down, myself included. I felt like a little kid again answering to my parents after I had broken something on a shelf they told me not to touch. I came home and I tearfully fell into the hands of God. I told him I wasn't enough. And like God always does he dried my tears and said "My dearest child, you are once again missing the forest for the trees."
I'm not enough because I am human. I will always make mistakes. I will always fall short of people's expectations (including my own), and no matter how many times it happens, I will look to God and ask God "Why can't I be enough?" and he will tell me all over again that I am.
I was enough for the Holy Spirit to come live in my heart. I was enough for Jesus to willingly hang on a cross to make me righteous and blameless in The Lord's eyes. I was enough for my sins to be washed away. I was enough for Jesus to love me. I was enough for God to create me, and to desire a relationship with me so strongly that He sent his only son to earth to die.
How heart wrenching it is to be crying in God's hands only for Him to say "My daughter, you are plenty." It's a beautiful picture, but it also means I once again forgot my identity in the midst of trying to please everyone, when really the only person I should be aiming to please is The Lord. My identity lies in Christ. I am a daughter of God, and that is plenty.
I often mistake being loved with making people happy, and I often so desperately want to make others happy so I can feel loved. And then I forget I am already loved by The Lord, and that He put people in my life that already love me -- even in my brokenness, just as He does. I may not always make them happy, I may make mistakes, but they continue to love me. Pleasing people and being loved are not the same, and confusing the two can break your heart oh so quickly.
In the midst of feeling broken, and not "enough" The Lord reminded me of the place I fit best- as His daughter, surrounded by His love, and in His arms, and that is more than enough for me.
