Little Wren Writes

If I asked you to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Your name, probably. Your job. Where you live. Perhaps you’d tell me whether you’re married. Whether you have children. What you enjoy doing. Maybe you’d even tell me what you’re good at. None of those things are wrong – they’re all part of our story (and I love to know these things about you!).

But they also make me wonder…who are we when those things change?

Who are we when the job disappears? When the relationship ends? When the children leave home? When our health changes? When retirement comes? When we can no longer do the things that once defined us?

Life has a way of asking the same question over and over again.

Who are you now?

Over the last couple of years, I’ve found myself asking that question more than I’d like. Not because I wanted to. But because life kept taking away the answers I would once have given.

I was a wife. Then I wasn’t.

I was a daughter who could still ring her mum. Then I wasn’t.

I was a carer – there was always someone who needed me. Someone to organise. Someone to help. Someone to encourage. Someone to look after. Someone to carry. And then, almost overnight, that identity was taken too.

It wasn’t just that people were gone.

It was that I no longer knew who I was without being needed.

This shook me significantly and my psychologist has been slowly helping me start to unpack this. I’d never realised how much of my identity had quietly become wrapped up in being ‘useful’.

The trouble is, usefulness makes a wonderful servant.
But it makes a terrible identity.

The moment you can no longer do what you’ve always done…the moment life changes your capacity…the moment people stop needing you in the same way – you begin asking frightening questions.

Am I enough?

Have I done enough?

Am I good enough?

If I stop achieving…
If I stop helping…
If I stop serving…
If I stop being the dependable one…
Will anyone still want me?

These questions are on a record player in the back of my mind. Some days it’s quiet. Other days it’s so loud I can’t hear much else. Playing over and over and over again. And the vinyls skip and the songs become scratchy and jarring. It’s remarkable how many different songs insecurity knows!

But underneath every one of them, I think it’s asking the same question.

Who am I?

Or perhaps an even better question…

Whose am I?

Our world spends an enormous amount of time telling us to find ourselves – Build your identity. Create it. Protect it. Express it. Curate it.

Lots of people find some sense of freedom or control in that. They love it. But I don’t think that’s good news. Because anything I have to build…well I also have to keep rebuilding.

Anything I achieve…I can lose.

Anything the world gives me…the world can take away.

I’ve spent years trying to answer the question, “Who am I?”

A daughter?
A wife?
A sister?
A friend?
A carer?
A minister?
A rather loud extrovert with too many questions and a racing ADHD brain?

The trouble is that every one of those answers can change. And eventually…they do.

The gospel asks a better question.

Not, ‘Who are you?‘, but ‘Whose are you?‘

Everything changes there.
Before I ever gave a kids talk or led a ministry…
Before I ever cared for another person…
Before I ever achieved anything worth mentioning…

I belonged to Christ.

That was true before my greatest successes. It was still true after my deepest losses.

In Jesus’ life, before he had done anything that we would consider impressive – before the miracles, the crowds, the sermons…even before the cross. He stands in the Jordan River, dripping wet from His baptism and His Father says,

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Nothing has been earned. Nothing has been proved. Nothing has been accomplished. Just delight.

Jesus didn’t minister for His Father’s love. He ministered from it.

I think I spend much of my life trying to reverse that order.
I quietly believe that if I work hard enough, serve enough, love enough, help enough – even pray enough…surely then I’ll feel secure. Surely then I’ll finally believe I’m enough. Except the gospel keeps interrupting that story. Again and again. It tells me that my identity isn’t something I earn. It’s something I receive. I am not first defined by what I do. I am defined by what Christ has done.

I am not first a minister. Or a daughter. Or a sister. Or a friend. Or a woman who has known loss. Or even a little bit annoying on a Monday morning.

I am, before all of those things, a beloved child of God.

That doesn’t mean insecurity disappears overnight. Mine certainly hasn’t. The record player still starts up some mornings with the most scratched up screeching music. Comparison still whispers. Criticism still lingers longer than encouragement. Failure still screams at me to question my worth.

But I am working at making sure those voices are no longer the loudest ones because there is another voice. Older. Truer. Steadier. The voice that says,

“You are mine.”

Not because I’ve earned it. Not because I’ve finally become enough. But because Jesus is.

I’m not particularly interested in becoming ‘impressive’ in this life. I’d rather become ‘rooted’ like a tree. Rooted deeply enough in God’s love that success doesn’t inflate me…and failure doesn’t destroy me. Rooted deeply enough that grief can change my circumstances without stealing my identity. Rooted deeply enough that when life strips away every title I’ve ever held, every role I’ve ever loved, every answer I’ve ever given to the question, “Who are you?” – there is still one answer that remains.

I am His.

And, in the end, that has been the truest and most unchanging thing about me all along.

“The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” 
Romans 8:15–16