Identity

I'm having an identity crisis, of sorts. I use the word 'crisis' because it's all a bit uncomfortable, but a better word might be awakening. Or resurrection. It's not exactly a mid-life crisis, or maybe it is, but I'm not about to trade the minivan in for a sports car or abandon my family in search of the 'real me'!

I think my true identity has been there all along - it's just been covered up by who I thought I was, and often by who I thought I was supposed to be. When I was very young, I identified myself as a good girl. I was called a goody-goody and I suspect more than one person found my goodness a bit obnoxious now and then. For most of my childhood (okay, let's be honest - for most of my LIFE leading up to my mid-twenties) I was intently focused on my future identity as a wife and mother. Other pieces of my identity included my success in school, my sense of humour, and the fact that I rarely got in trouble. I was, and am, a daughter, a sister, a Christian.

I spent an immense amount of time thinking about what was missing from my identity, though. I was so consumed by my dreams of marriage and motherhood that I became discontented and bitter. I was angry that God had not come through for me on these fronts - like He's a genie in a bottle, instead of the Creator of the Universe - so I experimented with other identities. I was a lesbian for a while, though I never would have called myself one, and still hesitate to label myself with that identity. A sign, perhaps, of my awareness during that time that I was not living in the light of my true identity. I also experimented with living apart from God. I stopped going to church and numbed myself - desperately denying the growing fear and darkness.

In the years since I finally surrendered to God and acknowledged that life apart from Him was unbearable, I have slowly started to become aware of my truest identity. I have found great joy and healing in being a wife and a mother, but I had to first accept that marriage and motherhood were not essential to my survival, or even my happiness. I am still waking up to the fact that the God who created the universe, in all its intricate, complex vastness, loves me. In fact, He loves me with an infinite and undeniable love - a love that He compares to (but is so much more than) the love of a mother, a father, a jealous lover... a love that died in my place and refuses to let me be content in any place that is not with Him. This is the core of my identity, that I am loved by God.

In the light of this awakening, I have begun to question other pieces of my identity that I always assumed to be true. Thanks, in part, to my gender, my Canadian-ness, and my culturally Mennonite upbringing, I have never been one to rock the boat. I've generally seen that as a good thing - I can get along with almost anyone, and I have a really handy polite mask that I can put on if I strongly disagree with you about anything. I can nod and smile and stuff a wide variety of unpleasant emotions and inconvenient opinions. Once I started embracing my truest identity, however, I started realizing that certain things could not be stuffed. My emotions have become - for me - quite unruly. I cry much more easily than I used to. I have started using words like 'passionate' to describe myself. The closer I have gotten to God, the more heartbroken I have become by the poverty and suffering and injustice in our world. In fact, now that my self-confidence is increasingly less about me and more about God, I find myself starting to care less about how my opinions will be received. I am even starting to embrace my inner activist. I might still feel like apologizing when I speak up, but I will no longer be silent and complacent and passive. I do not know how to go on pursuing a life of comfort, hoarding so much of the world's wealth, when I could have a part in relieving someone else's suffering. In light of God's love for me - for ALL of us - I must start living a life that looks like love.

So, I'm in the process of figuring out what to toss out, and what to take in. Spring cleaning my life in light of my identity. What is love - specifically loving God, and loving others - going to look like, exactly? I'm hoping it's going to look a lot like Jesus. I'm a little terrified, because He caused a lot of controversy and I'm more than a little uncomfortable with that. But I'm also thrilled, because He loves me and I know there's no place I'd rather be!

Sackcloth and Ashes

Sound the alarm in Jerusalem!

Raise the battle cry on my holy mountain!

Let everyone tremble in fear because the day of the Lord is upon us.

It is a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of thick clouds and deep blackness. (Joel 2:1,2)

Darkness and gloom. Thick clouds and deep blackness. Those words describe part of what I'm left with after attending Unbound 2013 - an anti-human trafficking conference. I knew I would be confronted with uncomfortable information. I suspected the subject matter would not be easy to take in. But I had no idea just how much I was going to be shaken. I had no idea just how horrific the situation is in our world - not just in Cambodia and Thailand and Moldova but also right here, in Calgary and across North America.

I recently read 2 Kings 6:24-30. The people are being besieged, and there is great famine.

26One day as the king of Israel was walking along the wall of the city, a woman called to him, "Please help me, my lord the king!"

27He answered, "If the Lord doesn't help you, what can I do? I have neither food from the threshing floor nor wine from the press to give you." 28But then the king asked, "What is the matter?"

She replied, "This woman said to me: 'Come on, let's eat your son today, then we will eat my son tomorrow.' 29So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, 'Kill your son so we can eat him,' but she has hidden her son."

30When the king heard this, he tore his clothes in despair. And as the king walked along the wall, the people could see that he was wearing burlap under his robe next to his skin.

As I read this story, I remember being horrified, but thinking that I was grateful we don't live in such a savage time. Such actions are incomprehensible, and I tried to forget what I had read. It made me too uncomfortable. But then I was confronted with information this past weekend that did more than make me uncomfortable. In our world today, TODAY, parents - mothers and fathers - are selling their children in to slavery. These children are being abused, exploited, suffering unimaginable horrors. It is happening today.

I came home last night and I cried. I thought about all I had learned and I felt like putting on sackcloth and ashes and running out in to the street, wailing. I prayed, desperate, like the people of Judah in 2 Chronicles 20:12, when they cried out to God in the face of imminent defeat, "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you." I don't know what to do with everything I've learned. It's too much to comprehend. But I do know this: what is happening in our world is not right, and something must be done.

And I believe the first step for me is to repent. I have allowed myself to become comfortable and complacent. I have been complicit in the exploitation of others through my silence and willing ignorance. Like the king and Haman in Esther 3:15, or Joseph's brothers in Genesis 37:25, I have been content to eat and drink while others suffer. In contrast, we read of the actions of Nehemiah when he returns to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall and is confronted with the suffering of his people at the hands of their flesh and blood. Hear their complaint in Nehemiah 5:5 - "We belong to the same family as those who are wealthy, and our children are just like theirs. Yet we must sell our children into slavery just to get enough money to live. We have already sold some of our daughters, and we are helpless to do anything about it, for our fields and vineyards are already mortgaged to others." Nehemiah is angry upon hearing this and speaks out against the wealthy ones, saying, "What you are doing is not right!" (v. 9) Jesus makes it clear in Luke 10 that if we are to love the way God wants us to love, we must not turn away from the suffering that exists in our world. It does not matter who is laying bleeding on the side of the road - we have an obligation to stop and do what we can to relieve their suffering. We are all neighbours. We are all kin. So what do I do now that I have been confronted with my ignorance and inaction?

"Even now," declares the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning."

Rend your heart and not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. 

(Joel 2:12,13)

So I mourn. I lay all my guilt and grief and gut-wrenching sadness at the feet of the King and ask for His forgiveness. I focus my eyes on Him, knowing that without Him, I do not have the strength to bear the burden of what I now know. I cling to Jesus, knowing that He alone is able to save us from the evil of our world, knowing that I have never felt closer to Him than when I have acknowledged my brokenness and surrendered myself to the only one who is able to restore me and make me whole.

And I claim the promise of Joel 2:25-27, which has rung out over my own life in the past, and which I believe we can claim for the devastated landscapes in our world:

"I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten...

...and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed.

Then you will know...that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other"

Weep.
Wait.
Be filled.
Then be ready to stand and move with our great God as He works through us to redeem the broken, the enslaved, and the oppressed.
Amen.