Who Am I?
“As children, our identities are defined largely by our families, especially our parents. We know who we are because of who we belong to, and that’s often how others know us as well. When you were a child, how do you imagine an adult friend of your family might have referenced your parents in an effort to identify you for someone else?” – Made to Crave, Lysa TerKeurst
Lynn, Louis and Lila’s daughter. Strong sense of self, a little flighty at times. Talks a lot.
That’s how someone might describe my 16 year old self.
The deeper question is how do I define myself today? How do you? By our roles? Mom, daughter, friend, wife? By our job? Vice-president, department head, speaker/author?
I believe that as parents, too often it can be by the performance of our children. My child is on the travel softball team. My daughter made the musical this year. My son was on the dean’s list – freshman year!
I was once told:
“We can’t take the blame when our kids don’t do well; nor can we take the credit when they do.”
That’s a hard one.
Our children are His children; God’s children first.
Just as God is not defined in His character by His kids; nor are we.
Preaching to myself again, I need to ponder on that one today.
Do you struggle with defining who you are by who your kids are? Who your wife is? What your husband does? Let’s lay that all down at Jesus’ feet and ask Him to help us define ourselves as forgiven, set-free, accepted, holy, made-new, loved, confident and victorious children of God.
Yes – I struggle with this – but not so much because of what I think but because others really do think and comment that the good things my kids do are because of my good influence, and the bad things they do is because of something I must have done wrong. I hate this.
Dear Friend,
I'm sorry you have had this experience. You think people ever tell God the reason His kids mess up is because He's done something wrong? Not hardly 🙂
Lynn
I love this…"Let's lay that all down at Jesus' feet and ask Him to help us define ourselves as forgiven, set-free, accepted, holy, made-new, loved, confident and victorious children of God."
Beautiful! It is so easy to label ourselves and others. Definitely raising teens is not a job for whimps! Praying that our kids always love God!
Teresa