“Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” “What you’re looking for isn’t out there. It’s in you.” “Be who you are, not who the world wants you to be.” “Being yourself is the prettiest thing that you can be.” If you have ever walked into a craft or home décor store, or have searched for motivational quotes, you have probably read at least one of these mantras, if not all of them. At first, inspiration may ensue. You may feel on top of the world. You realize that you have potential and add something to the world, have something to contribute. You are someone. However, these feelings of individualism and power may quickly fade as it hits you that everything you were, are, and will ever be, all comes from you alone. You are the master of your destiny, which is empowering but nerve-racking all at once.
This, though, is what the world wants us to believe. The world prompts us to continually seek success, never experiencing contentment or peace, while stretching ourselves thin in order to attend to all of the tasks of a day. Exhaustion seems to be the norm, with rest suddenly becoming a gift to earn. We live for the weekend, for a slight reprieve. Days seem to whiz by, emphasizing the feelings that there is never enough time. Our culture and society are not structured around rest. Rather, some may find their identity not only in who they have created themselves to be, but also what they can and will accomplish. As children of God, we are called to live outside of this cycle, outside of this realm of chaos. We have a higher calling, a Creator who wrote our stories years ago, and a sanctuary to rest in.
Identity is a hard concept to fathom. Especially in high school, perhaps beginning in middle school, we want to know who we are and may start to dream of a future. Questions ensue and we examine inward and outward. We begin to care about people’s perceptions and what they think of us. This is a struggle, yet there’s a grounding truth in the Bible, found in Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV): “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 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. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
These verses are foundational to our stories as Christians. We did have a beginning orchestrated by the Lord. He formed us and knew us before we knew ourselves. He knows who we were, who we are, and who we will be. There is an element here of individualism, but not the type with the exhausting expectations. Rather, there’s an element of uniqueness. God created us in his image exactly how He intended. There was no mistake and we are His, called to live our lives as children of God.
Growing up in a Christian home, these were all things I heard growing up. I knew that I was a “Daughter of the King” and belonged to Him. However, I failed to realize that just as we are unique, He has a unique love for each of us, or, in the words of Lisa Bevere, “God loves us uniquely rather than equally.” The word equal “also implies that God’s love is measured or measurable, and it is neither. It is infinite. Unique carries so much more depth” (Bevere). There is no standard, code, or checklist that the Lord adheres to when caring for us. He knows us so intimately that He knows each of our vulnerabilities and knows how to guide us through them. He knows how best to hold each of our hearts and how to most effectively calm our thoughts. He also calls us to serve in different ways, with our own unique strengths He gave us, as read in Romans 12:5-6a: “so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.”
So, let us go forward not conforming to the impositions of the world and relying on ourselves to create a perfect image. Let us leave the idea that we must become something by our own merit behind. Let us be freed from the pressure to continuously strive and attain success. Let us resist the human “temptation to think that God loves us all the same” (Bevere). Rather, let us recognize that as we were uniquely made in the image of God, He has a specific, unique, blanketing love for each of us. Let us be ourselves in light of that truth: that He loves each of our unique persons in a way unlike any other.
Works Cited:
Bevere, Lisa. Without Rival: Embrace Your Identity and Purpose in an Age of Confusion and Comparison. Revell, 2016.
New International Version (NIV) – Version Information – Biblegateway.com, https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/new-international-version-niv-bible/.