crafted for love
As a teenage girl growing up in a generation that is nothing but a contradiction, knowing who I am and stepping into that identity mean two different things.
Think about it: the entire world is pushing this idea of acceptance onto everyone, even people who don’t want to hear it. Yet when I walk into school, all I hear are slurs for every group of people, gossip about what that freshman girl is wearing (who does she think she is?!) and the constant bashing of the people we claim to be loving. The world is confusing, and hateful, and toxic, so when told to offer up a definition that describes exactly who I am, it isn’t surprising that I come up empty handed. Nothing will ever be good enough for the hunters on the outside, so it’s easier to stay in than risk embarrassment. And for a while, I did just that: kept a low profile, nodded along in agreement when someone else talked about a topic that I completely disagreed with, and managed a soft smile even on the brink of tears. Now, seventeen years young, I do very much the opposite.
No, I do not search for conflict. I have no interest in being reckless when choosing my battles. Though I’m a fighter when I’m mad, I pick those fights with intelligence; I choose what I feel most passionately about to defend. Because today’s world has a predetermined idea of who I am, and who you are too.
So in the process of searching for my own identity, it was an uphill battle to scratch and claw and bite my way through the world’s predetermined assumptions of me. This world is the first to shove another bottle on my shelf, the first to slap another label on me. Unstable. Depressed. These words ring loud in my ears as if they’re simply placed there to silence any full thought, any idea that could become a tangible and real thing. This world wants to belittle our voice, even though they claim to be fighting for it. This world wants to make us feel unheard, only because we have the potential to be reaching so, so many.
This world has painted mental illness to be this pretty packaged thing; we’re being fetishized, as young girls with full heads and kind hearts. Wearing our heart on our sleeves makes us vulnerable, and yet it also makes us strong. The world wants us to disregard our love for people and places and instead focus on the crippling sadness that this gift sometimes brings with it, as though this world is determined to knock us down again. Because they are, sweet girl, they are. And yet even though this world seems large and powerful, our identity isn’t rooted in any of these things.
And although we know that the words of the world only hold as much weight as we allow them to, they still sometimes sneak in. Our own thoughts begin to intertwine with the world’s perception of us and soon we are an empty vessel, a hollow being with no substance. When we begin to identify our own identity in the things of this world we begin the journey of losing the battle.
For the longest time, I identified best with Alaska Young, a teenage girl in John Green’s beautiful tragedy Looking For Alaska. Alaska Young was beautiful, to say the least. Strong, independent, feminine. A rollercoaster, a tidal wave, and a hurricane. In fact, Miles “Pudge” Halter described her best in his own words “If people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane.” This book rocked my world from the start. As a young teen just figuring out the world, Alaska looked at it just as I did: disastrous and heartbreaking and foolish and unfair and twisted and broken and poetic and so perfectly magnificent. I longed to be her, in every sense. And yet the character I most identified with killed herself in the middle of the novel and this one factor that should have scared the heck out of me didn’t.
I identified with a mess; an aching heart, a stolen childhood, a deep and hurting soul.
And I found myself just the same, only negative adjectives being accurate to my character.
When I busied myself with this idea of being this messy uncontrollable thing, that’s exactly what I was. Except the world didn’t find it poetic, no, it found it disappointing and disastrous and also a relief. Because the sinister things of this world wished to keep me locked in a space where my brain couldn’t write the words and do the thinking and speaking and empowering that I was made to do.
Because after all this failure and heartbreak I realized how shallow everything I invested my own identity into turned out to be.
God promises an identity deeply rooted in all things of Himself.
Love, shelter, safety.
From the very beginning God created us to be like him. No, not perfect, but “created in His own image,” as Genesis 1:27 states. He insists that from the very first thought He had of you that He viewed you to be similar to him. How I still at times feel so much hatred toward a body and being that God created to be in His own perfect image is beyond me, yet at times I still feel myself collapsing into that insecurity again.
And that’s okay.
Perfection has never been an expectation our Creator has for us. He doesn’t expect us to wake up each morning feeling ready to conquer worlds. He simply expects us to wake up each morning with an expectation for Him instead; an expectation that He will use us as vessels to spill out his love through, and if that doesn’t scream identity to you, I don’t what will.
Fearfully and Wonderfully made, we are crafted for God’s perfect love. We are crafted to love one another, to love the broken, the unsure, the doubters and even the haters of this world. God’s identity for us was never meant to be put into something of this world but only into the one everlasting never changing thing: Him. And because of that I feel relief.
I feel relieved knowing that I awaken with an identity already chosen for me every single day, with no pressure or guilt or pain intertwined with it. I feel relieved knowing that my Father is in the center of it all, fighting my battles alongside me and loving the heck out of me as I’m doing it, so that His love can flow through me into the hearts of others.
God’s identity for you is powerful and beautiful and romantic. And the only step you have to make is stepping into His love. Because this is a love that never changes, or fades, or shakes, no matter the situation. On your next day of insecurity, remember that the same God who hung every star in the night sky insists on loving you, and every piece of you. Step into his love today. After all, you were made for it.