I am…

Who am I? I know that a lot of times this question is presented in praise and worship as a way of say “You, Lord, are so much greater than I and yet you gave yourself for me.” But today I am being a little more literal. Who am I really. Who is this person. Who do I see in the mirror everyday. I read these ridiculous things in social media that tell me that I need to find the joy in myself, to search for what makes me happy, to be focussed on my joy and my purpose and my life in order to know who I am. The world at large tells me that everything I need to know about me comes from within me. Let me try that for a minute. I am a mother, I am a wife, I am a daughter. I get angry at my children, I do not always want to be kind, I want things to be easy and fair and uncomplicated. Lying is sometimes easier than telling the truth, within me there are a lot of bad things. Me, just me, cares only about me. And that is the problem. Because caring about only me doesn’t make me happy. Spending time trying to find myself from within myself is a waste of that very precious and limited resource. I am going to be honest, there are many mornings I wake up and my first thoughts are of myself, of what I want, of how I think things should be. But I have children so, whether by choice or need, those things all get pushed aside. It is in learning more about the role I have as mother and wife that has clarified for me who I am. It has led me to a deeper investigation of my faith, and I still feel like I have barely scratched the surface. I am a child. I will forever be a child. I am saved. I have salvation forever from true death. My body may someday pass away, but who I am will not. I am rich. Not here, not now, not monetarily but I am rich in gifts from my God, my Father. I am servant. I am here to serve and grow my children, I am here to serve my husband whole heartedly, I am here to serve others, I am here to serve God. I am sin. I, without God, am sin, I am dirty, I am dark, I am scary. I am broken. I am not what God intended when he created man. I am defiled by sin, introduced at the time of the fall, I am not the perfection God originally created. Instead, I carry with me the defiled nature of a sinner. Humanity carries the defiled nature of a sinner. Who am I? I am everything that God hates wrapped up in a package He created and loves. Wrap your head around that one. I have (almost) 28 years of experience that show me I am loved by God. And the greatest display of that love is His death, His suffering, His separation from the Father. If you go here you can hear a trauma doctor relate the amount of destruction rendered by Christ’s physical suffering. I don’t know, in all honesty, if I would subject myself to that for anyone. Let alone the people who inflicted those very wounds. Beyond that, Christ separated himself from his Father.  That agony, the agony of carrying the weight of all sin from all creation, and then being separated from the support and love of His Father, a part of himself, is unfathomable. I am awed. I am honoured. I am ashamed of the sin that required such sacrifice. I am immensely, immeasurably grateful. I am forever changed. So who am I? I am a sinner, I am broken, I am bad. I am a precious, loved, saved, created child of a Father who did the unthinkable in order to save me, to share with me, to teach me. I am humbled. I am aiming to live my life in a way that does credit to that great sacrifice. I will never be perfect, but I can always aim to change. I aim to remember who comes last. Me.