Who am I? What is my true identity and why is it so hard to figure that out?

"Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world.

"You need spiritual guidance; you need people who can keep you anchored in your true identity. The temptation to disconnect from that deep place in you where God dwells and to let yourself be drowned in the praise or the blame of the world always remains.

"Since that deep place in you where your identity as a child of God is rooted has been unknown to you for a long time, those who were able to touch you there had a sudden and often overwhelming power over you. They became part of your identity. You could no longer live without them. But they could not fulfill that divine role, so they left you, and you felt abandoned. But it is precisely that experience of abandonment that called you back to your true identity as a child of God. Only God can fully dwell in that deepest place in you and give you a sense of safety. But the danger remains that you will let other people run away with your sacred center, thus throwing you into anguish.

"It might take a great deal of time and discipline to reconnect your deep, hidden self and your public self, which is known, loved and accepted but also criticized by the world. Gradually, though, you will begin feeling more connected and become more fully who you truly are – a child of God. There lies your real freedom."

-From Henri Nouwen, in his book, The Inner Voice of Love

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What do you think about this? Do you feel like there a multiple things, people, or issues that are vying for you to make them your identity...Your hope...Your security? Do you find that they serve that purpose well, or do you feel like they leave you frustrated or confused? We wrestle with questions like this at Starting Point, and we ask what does Jesus have to do with any of it? What does one's past and family dynamics have to do with it? And is there actually a safe place to discuss any of this? We believe there is, and invite you to join us.

The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry