Episode 34: What is Identity?

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Why is identity so important? Our identity is our sense of self.  What or who we identify with can determine our sense of wellbeing, our abilities, our level of hope, and our future.

I spent part of my life identifying with things that left me feeling not just bad about myself but empty, confused, and depressed. Then, I experienced a major shift in my identity which empowered and filled me with purpose, hope, and direction.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s during the rise of hip-hop, super models, and the personal computer. From Biggie Smalls to Oprah to Steve Jobs, I identified with celebrities and their accomplishments. And, because I identified with them, dreamed of being like them, I developed a strong sense that despite my circumstances and surroundings, I could become anything.

Having money and achieving goals was not a value I got from my parents. Both of my grandfathers were car mechanics. Before my dad succumbed to a heroin addiction, he was a roofer and my mom stayed home with us. They were this biracial couple married just a few years after it was legal to do so in the US. Although they wanted better, the strain of racism, addiction, abuse, and the unhealed trauma of the Vietnam War eventually took a toll. Dad ended up in prison and Mom dealt with her pain by partying.  

A black hole began to open across my future, but I held onto the idea that I could be a success even after I became a mom at sixteen. I went to college, graduated on time with honors. Started my career and achieved some level of success. But, by age twenty-five, addicted to marijuana and materialism, with two children by two different dads, I didn’t know how to break the cycle of abuse, poverty, and hopelessness I’d been born into. The black hole threatened to suck me in.

By age thirty, despair began to eclipse the dreams of my youth. No matter how much I identified with celebrity culture, I was still obscure, living paycheck to paycheck. I did things, I didn’t want to do. The disconnection between my ideal self-image, successful and free from addiction, loved and whole and my reality became too great. It was the darkest time of my life. The hopes and dreams of success I’d identified with my entire life, what comforted me through the trials of my childhood, had eluded me.

I wanted to die.

As I write in All Gifts, my memoir, “An ugly laugh erupted out of me. I wiped my salty tears away. With nothing left to lose and for once not caring who heard or saw, I yelled at the rocks and the sky and the breaking waves. ‘Where are you? You who call yourself God. Where are you? I’m here. What are you trying to tell me? Are you trying to tell me anything? If you’re real, I need you to help me. Send someone to help me …’”

My prayer was answered quickly and definitively. Like two of my favorite movie scenes, Mufasa to Simba in the Lion King and Queen Ramonda to T’Challa in the Black Panther, God sent someone to encourage me to remember who I was. To remember whose I was.

And since that time over fifteen years ago, God has reminded me of the importance of my identity.

The contrast reminds me of contrast Jesus talks about in the Book of Matthew:

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

When we base our identity on something shifting and changing like people, possessions, or the elusive success, we are doomed to crash.

But when we build our identity on what the bible and what Jesus says about us, we have a firm foundation.

“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.

Stay tuned for more episodes and blog posts on how God transformed my identity and turned my pain into gifts. And check out the related YouTube video below!