Tell Me Who You Are

Without Talking About Your Kids, Your Degrees, Or Your Mean Lasagna

I was asked another question I didn’t have an answer for last week.

It wasn’t from Theo this time [p.s. I must say how much I appreciated your thoughtful responses to the questions he posed about dinosaurs and eternity and such]; no, this question came from the women’s group that I show up for every Thursday morning.

This semester’s study is around identity. You know, who we are. Now, I’m usually a pretty pragmatic girl—I feel like I’ve got a good handle on who I am and what I’m meant to do. So when our leaders started the conversation with, “Tell us who you are,” my brain said, Easy. Wife of Ethan. Mom of Theo and Vivian. Teacher-turned-writer.

But then they added: “And you need to do it without talking about your family, your accomplishments, or what you do for work.”

Um…what?

Of course, I recognized what the question was really asking: Are we able to separate what we do from who we are? Or is our whole sense of self tied up in what we can and have accomplished?

It’s just that in that moment, I couldn’t think of a single thing worth sharing about me that wasn’t tied to an accomplishment. I was speechless—and that’s real off-brand for me.

I wanted to talk about my Master’s Degree. And how I can bake a really good lasagna. I wanted to talk about my transition into a new career and the social circles I’ve built and my three- and two-year-old and how they are really quite literate. I wanted to prop myself up in a way that said, “Look here. I am a person who is worthy of a spot in the world.”

But doggone it, I couldn’t say any of those things. And so I sat dumbfounded in that circle of women, scratching my head and thinking, “Without all those things, what even remains?”

And I suppose that’s what I’ve been trying to get to the heart of for a while now. Because here’s something I’m learning about life: All of those things get stripped away. Master’s Degrees are slips of paper that get buried in the attic. You enter seasons where you can hardly pour a bowl of cereal, let alone make a lasagna. New careers lose their luster and the same old struggles with motivation and work-life balance filter in. People you thought you’d have forever just stop showing up. Kids grow up and move out.

So then, what remains of us when all those things change or fade away?

I could only think of one answer in that moment, and it’s what I finally shared with the group: “I am someone who knows that life is hard, and who believes Jesus’ goodness is the only thing that’s gonna get me through it.” In my essence, that’s who I am. A realist who is an optimist by the grace of God alone.

And so isn’t it funny that I often depend on the other outward things to get me through life? To tell me that I’m worthy and that I’m secure and that it’s all going to be okay? The result is that when they fail me [or I fail myself], I begin to tailspin. I begin to lose sight of my identity. I begin to believe that perhaps I’m not worthy after all.

“I am someone who knows that life is hard, and who believes Jesus’ goodness is the only thing that’s gonna get me through it.”

In his painful goodness, God sometimes allows exactly this to happen. A peeling away of all the things that we depend on to tell us who we are. He allows us to get to a point where only our naked, essential selves remain—and then he says, You are loved. Yet. And still. Without adornment. You are worthy.

And then, as he sends us back into the world, allowing for us again to pick up the trappings of this life, there remains inside us a single truth: We are not what we do. We are simply what we are. And what we are is love, because we’ve been loved.

And you know what I’m beginning to realize? Being love is the most important thing we could contribute to the world, anyway.

So what about you? Tell me who you are in the comments below, without telling me about your family or your accomplishments or your job. I can’t wait to know.