I know the smell of the trees and the flowers around me. I know the feel of the breeze (as it blows into my face and messes up my hair), I know the taste of the soy latte and the sound of the cups clinking back down on the saucers. And I know when the question is coming… This is my normal Thursday morning every week. I get the pleasure of two of the most lovely people in my world listening to my every rant, my worries and my delights. They listen, they giggle, they give good advice, and then they ask the question. I asked them to ask it…and it’s good. But it does its job in catching me unaware. ‘What is God teaching you right now?’ It’s my favourite question to be asked and it’s my favourite question to ask. Because almost always the response, from me and others is a blank stare…but that’s what is so great. It makes you think what God is doing. What you’ve been working on…whether you’ve even been noticing where God is pulling you, pushing you, helping you. The more I use the question, the more I’m learning to ask myself daily, where is God in this? What is God aiming for in this? God, what are you teaching me through this? And so in pursuit of more of God’s freedom, I’m zeroing in on this month’s lesson. Really it’s the lesson of this year, this decade…the whole of my life so far. And I’ll wager it’s a lesson he’ll be teaching me for a while to come. Who am I when I’m fully me? Identity…cliche topic much?! Yup! But it’s cliche because it’s the thing we struggle with most…it’s where the yucky enemy will attack first and always and it’s where we’ll shake most. Who we are…and whether we’ll find ourselves to be enough. Working with youth highlights it to me on the daily (can you tell I’m a youth pastor… ‘on the daily.’ Down with the kids much? Hola to my youth reading this who know just how much of an old woman I really am!) But adults are rarely different to teenagers on this…it’s just teenagers have to live in a world that is slightly more constant in screaming ‘who are you? Are you enough?’ But for me, this past year and a half has been such a learning curve in finding out who I am. All my life I’ve been surrounded by friends who’ve grown up with me, I’ve been in a certain environment, I’ve been doing things, certain things have been expected of me, I’ve naturally done things out of habit, my family has shaped me, my environment has shaped me, my friends, my church, everything. And that’s cool in a lot of ways… Except, when I moved to New Zealand. When I moved here, all of the understanding, all the things that surrounded my identity like a brick wall that holds up a house disappeared and I was left with all the belongings inside falling all over the floor. When we lose all the things that defined us, we have to find out who we really are. Suddenly the people I surfed with for so long weren’t there…so I’ve had to work out how to go alone, which for me is huge and scary…and anxiety jumped all over it. Suddenly all my coffee shop buddies were gone…so my new normal became journalling through my days off instead of chatting about my heart with close friends. Suddenly the climbing gym was 90 minutes away and so that hobby has to go on hold, just for practicalities sake. (and because I don’t have the money to drive up and down everyday). Suddenly no one knows my past mess and struggle so I live in a tension between inappropriately oversharing and guiltily hiding everything. Suddenly my friends who have loved me for 23 years aren’t here, and so I have to rebuild friendships and learn once again to be open and how to let people love me. Suddenly no one is forcing me to do read books for a degree, so I have to work out which books I actually enjoy. Suddenly I’m not working right in the face of deep trauma and suffering and I have to remind myself why my heart has such a deep place for others within. My walls fell down and I’m only just staring to understand what my inside looks like. It’s been so, so hard, but it’s been so strengthening. Without anything already there to mould me, I’ve found out what I’m willing to fight for in my life and what I can let go of. What I need because it builds me up and what I don’t actually care about. This has happened in a lot of big and little ways and I haven’t even finished processing them all. But here’s where we’re at. I’ve grown up in a busy environment, with people usually near. So I’ve grown up thinking that I always need people, that I’m an extrovert. But since being here the quiet introvert within has been forced out of her cage and instead of hating the silence in the way I always feared I would. I’ve found that when I embrace the quiet, I thrive…that actually I need some silence, I need some space- it leads to a more intentional me. Where at home I was expected to know certain things and pushed so hard to be as intelligent as possible, now I’ve found that I’m not one of those people. I’m not my father, I don’t remember every fact…actually my memory is pretty poor for certain things. And suddenly, because I’m not trying to fight for a skill I’ll never have, I feel more free. More right. Where before I felt more obliged to certain hobbies by habit, clubs or friends. I now know I choose those things, I’m not forced into them, but I will still choose to surf, I will still choose to run, to walk, to cycle, to sit outside. No longer do I do it because I want to fit in, or feel cool. And some days, anxiety will fight me hard on that one, and sadly for months it won…but now I know it’s a choice I need to make because I’m learning Charli. Most of all though I know for certain that Jesus will be my constant. The more I place my heart in God’s hands, the more I understand who I’m meant to be. The things I do are important, but what makes us who we are, is who’s we are. I might feel less at home in New Zealand some days, but Jesus isn’t moving. He’s the same in England and in NZ and he knows who I am. So i’ve learned that the home for my heart is in the hands of the one who made it. There’s a lot more and there will be a lot more. But the main thing on this for me is that I’m learning to be intentionally myself. Usually I don’t like comments like that, they make me feel way too hipster for my own good. But that’s the phrasing that works and so i’m going with it. I think I’m finally learning what so many other people have tried to tell me. That I don’t necessarily like what’s cool or fashionable. And that I like things other people don’t like. That I can enjoy things without being good at them and that it doesn’t matter what people think I should be…because I will be who I am. The reason we struggle so hard with our identity is that we aren’t putting it in the right place. While we’re placing it in what we do or what friends we have, God is busy calling us to put it in what our heart is like, in who our saviour is. It’s an odd paradox but actually the more we pursue Jesus, the more like him we become, the more authentically we will be ourselves. Whether we accept it or not, the more Jesus we reflect, the more ourselves we become. There’s not a ‘new’ lesson here and I’m not suggesting there is. I’m sorry if you feel cheated out of some time that you thought was going to teach you something new. But here’s some advice. Sit down. Think. Pray. And make a list of what actually is YOU. Think whether there are things you do, say or wear for the sake of it. Work out what you wish you were doing but you’re too embarrassed, too scared about. It’s not something people know about you and they’ve put you in a box now? Change the box…break it. Reshape it. Be exactly you. And it will be enough.
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