: who someone is : the name of a person
: the qualities, beliefs, etc., that make a particular person or group different from others
this word, identity, has been on my heart lately.
maybe because I'm 10,000 miles from home and for the first time in my life living in a country where I know less people than I have fingers. (and yes, I have the normal amount of fingers)
I've found myself questioning my own identity. Who am I, really? What are my strengths, my weaknesses, my defining qualities?
Moving to a far & distant place with little or no friends gives you the chance to completely and totally reinvent yourself. This was a prominent thought in my head when coming here. It was new, exciting-- a blank page in a cluttered notebook.
And I think I have reinvented myself in certain ways. Little things, like picking shoes I never would've bought back home. They're not my style? Who says? No one knows me- they don't know I wouldn't normally wear these BA black pleather shoes. So I bought them. And after about the 16th time wearing them I started to feel less like a poser and a bit more like myself, just in cooler shoes.
So yeah, the whole reinventing thing is awesome and totally invigorating. But I think I got a bit carried away with it. Because I started questioning things deeper than shoe preference. My whole persona, really. Its like I became a stranger even to myself. I woke up in a completely foreign place, with no long term plan, and no clue how I got here. It was suddenly and completely alarming. I felt like the rug was pulled out from under my feet, leaving me disoriented and a bit confused.
So here's the truth; plain and simple.
I don't completely know who I am.
I don't completely know what I want.
and I don't at all know where I'm going.
But I do know that my trust, my hope, my entire being rests in my creator.
He knows who I am-completely.
[For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb Psalm 139:13]
He knows what I want-completely.
[Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4]
And He definitely knows where I'm going.
[In their hearts, humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps. Proverbs 16:9]
Resting in these promises & my identity in him.
& hoping to figure this whole shoe/identity thing out in due time.
