My Identity

By Nuri Lee, Outreach Worker in Flemingdon Park

In the last few months of 2018, leading into the following year, I began learning a lot more and became increasingly aware of and exposed to my sinful nature. At that time, it felt crippling. It was a pain and guilt I had never felt or experienced before, and it led me to feel the need to hide my sin from others, myself and ultimately from God. Through that experience, He helped me see, for the first time, and for myself, His great gentleness and a deeper understanding of His love for me; that I could come to Him in whatever state I am in, and how my identity fully lies in being His child.

I mention this because in the last few months of 2019, I had been exposed to a new, very internal struggle of being a female and being young. It could have easily been something I was overthinking about through my interactions with others and making a case out of something, which may not have even existed–regardless, it had been something that was more active in my mind.

Exactly a year later, I still found myself trying to overcome a core struggle of who I was made to be, but just in a different way. Had I not learned anything?

Steering away from my usual state of hiding my suffering and pain from our God, I found myself somehow (totally through God’s grace) looking towards Him in my broken state. It led me to think: Whose attention and approval am I looking for? What am I finding my righteousness in? It was not always Christ. But the Lord graciously accepted me each time I came to Him with these struggles in my brokenness.

I was reminded in these moments of feeling insecure, inadequate or less than, that my righteousness is found in Christ, and that in Him I can be fully satisfied in who He created me to be. He took my brokenness and restored me; He transformed my moping, complaining and sadness into worshipping Him and seeing His greatness and glory. He has been pruning my understanding of who I am and in whom my identity is found in–His child; His daughter.

Likewise, He has taught me and helped me learn a little bit more of His own character: the One in Whom I take refuge. Through this ongoing learning experience, He has been graciously providing me with the confidence I need to help the children at our programs, and everyone else I serve, by helping them understand their true identity and to have confidence in it as well.

“Say to my soul, ‘I am your salvation!’” ~ Psalm 35:3b