Identity: Who Are You ?

For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.

I think that this might be one of the toughest things to do in life and my heart and prayers go out to individuals that want to please and depend on others for their identity. Can you allow yourself to be free ?

When we examine ourselves and our lives though, we see that we have pains and we have hurt. We feel the need that we need to turn to someone. Our hopes and prayers is that this person will help us in our journey. But often, we are perplexed on who to ask, on who to seek out. If we are honest, we will come to this conclusion:

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

So, what do we do when we look into our life and we see that our life is filled with anger, pain, regreats and more ? Maybe, just maybe, we can hang our hat on the following:

When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope

Hope, now that is something that we can cling to. We do not have to find an escape to the pain and the suffering. Instead, we can take what is eatin us up and transform it into a purpose. Our identity, our cure to who we are and why we are here.

Let the pain, suffering and confussion transform your life into purpose.

Thanks to Nouwen for the quotes. His words are so rich.