Identity Amnesia

I recently heard Paul Tripp say that "Identity amnesia always leads to identity replacement". I was completely floored by this amazing statement. How true it is that when I lose sight of who I am, and I would add from whom I come, I begin to search for some type of replacement. This statement was not gender specific but I would like to get "woman/mother" specific. I think that it can be very easy for us women and mothers to quickly lose our identity or should I say, replace our identities. For instance, how many times have I let my pride for what my husband does for our country cross the line and become part of myself? Or perhaps even more often I have placed my God-given blessed job of being a mother and wife as the core of who I am (my identity) forgetting that who I am is not rapped up in what I do, who I am married to, how many children I have or how well they behave but rather it is based on who is my creator.

So I venture back to the beginning:

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you.
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

¹⁶ your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139: 13-16)

David remembered from whom he came and this is a necessary step in understanding our identity. I was created by God. The next step is understanding for whom was I created.

¹ But now, this is what the LORD says—
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
"Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine. (Isaiah 43:1)

I love my husband and my children but I have to recognize that while my job is to take care of them they are not for whom I was created. When my husband does not like my cooking, or we are not seeing eye-to-eye, or I am unable to help him feel better after a bad day, it does not lessen who I am. When my children are miss behaving it does not reflect on who God created. No, these are behaviors and situations that are tools which give me opportunities to reflect God through his created being...me.

When I forget that I am a child of God, created in His image, for his purpose I then get caught up in trying to find myself. This only results in looking at what the world has to offer which always ends in more identity amnesia. It will never be complete. It can not because the world did not create me. How can any product find significance in itself. It always has to look to its creator.

Lord, I pray that as life is all around me and I live in this world that you will help me to remember that I am created by you and for your purposes. Nothing in this life will lessen my value and worth because they are not in me but in the fact that I am your creation and a child of God. AMEN!

³⁶For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36)