Go Write Your Song: Reclaiming Your God-Given Identity Series

Trauma and Transformation - "Go Write Your Song: Reclaiming Your God-Given Identity"

This is the 8th and final talk in an 8-week class called "Trauma and Transformation, Level 1". The course takes a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual approach to healing. Both Christians and non-Christians are welcome. This is a reflection time of about 10 minutes that occurs in the class, before the remaining time which is spent in trauma education - helping people understand the impact of trauma on the mind and on all of life.

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I want to talk today about Identity. What we believe about ourselves connects to our sense of our Identity. Who you are. Who I am. Identity is a big deal.

A lot of attention is given to various types of identity in the media and on social media. Universities have whole curriculums that talk about this subject, and that’s because identity really matters.

We’ve seen the odd phenomenon recently of people appropriating aspects of the identity of others.

Most noticeable and alarming to say the least recently has been politicians who have said, to gain some advantage, that they have first nations blood.

So whether it's a power ploy or if its a mental health issue, or if it’s just a deep struggle with who we are as person, issues of identity crop up often.

And the search for identity is legit. It’s one of those pieces of the puzzle when we think about trying to figure out who we are and why we are here, when we are trying to sort ourselves out, as we look at questions of purpose and meaning.

It’s a big existential question - questions about being alive - one of those things lots of folks struggle with as they sort through questions about the meaning of life; and, honestly, too many people never come up with an answer,...or at least an answer that has the potential to satisfy their questions.

I’ve known people who spent their whole lives asking questions about the meaning of life, who never landed anywhere;

on their deathbed they had no answer, and that did not bring them any sense of comfort as they were passing.

They never did figure out why they were here, why they suffered as they did; what was the point of it all.

And even when we’re open to not just asking those questions but expecting that an answer can be found, sadly our answers can wind up being very surfacey, very much NOT revealing much about us.

We end up knowing very little about who we are, why we matter, how it is that our lives have value.

We’re all familiar with the social convention of meeting a new person at an event, and asking them: So what do you do?

And most us have been trained to answer by talking about our jobs or if we’re not currently working about our families or hobbies or such. But we know that there’s more.

A big part of personal growth and healing, in my experience, is connected to becoming settled in our identity as human beings. Who are we, what are we about, what do we stand for?

It’s connected to finding a foundation for our lives that’s solid enough to hold us up when the storms come.

So many of us have received so many negative messages in our lives. Those messages, often spoken by those who cared for us as children, really hurt us.

We heard that we weren’t valuable. As the youngest of 4 kids in my family, I often heard that I was just an annoyance.

Sometimes early those messages, that negative messaging, from people whose role should have been to encourage and teach us, have been reinforced in our adult lives.

We can sometimes still hear echos of the criticism and harsh words if we are still enough.

But here’s the thing: somehow, those messages need to be overwritten. That’s putting it mildly. They need to be blown apart.

The messaging needs to change. Who we are is an ongoing story, and that story of who we are and what we are becoming needs to find space to breathe, so we’re not stuck living by those old, hurtful messages. We need a new understanding.

Spirituality was a concept developed a lot by the apostle Paul as he wrote a bunch of the letters in the New Testament of the Bible, where He talked a lot about the human spirit and the Spirit of God.

And Paul really seemed convinced that spirituality has something to say to us about identity.

Very briefly, Paul wrote: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” Romans 8:16. Paul shows that true spiritual identity comes from the Spirit of God affirming deep within us who we truly are—beloved children of God.