I Once Was Lost But Now I'm Found

I will never forget the moment when someone I loved looked at me and said, “I need to find myself.” I can still remember the quality of the light in the room, the strange hush in the air, the way those four words seemed to rearrange the furniture of my life in an instant. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even dramatic. But it hit with the quiet force of a tremor—small on the outside, seismic on the inside.

Nothing prepares you for a sentence like that.

Because you don’t just hear it.

You feel it.

And when it lands, it lands everywhere at once.

I didn’t argue.

I didn’t shout.

I didn’t preach.

I didn’t even know what to say.

All I knew was that something sacred to me was slipping through my fingers, and I didn’t know how to stop it. And for a long time afterward, those words echoed in my heart like a riddle I could never quite solve: “I need to find myself.” What does that even mean? Where does a person go to do that? And why does that search so often dismantle the very relationships that have helped shape who we are?

Over the years, as life settled and God healed, I began to understand something I couldn’t see in that moment: most people who say, “I need to find myself,” aren’t trying to be cruel. They’re trying to survive. They’re trying to make meaning out of an inner confusion they don’t know how to name. They’re trying to make sense of a fragmented story. They’re overwhelmed by the gap between who they are and who they feel they should be.

But here’s the irony:

You cannot find yourself by seeking yourself.

You cannot discover identity by turning inward.

You cannot locate your soul by wandering through your own thoughts.

Identity does not rise from within.

Identity descends from above.

In James 3, the Bible uses a word—“self-seeking”—a word that carries the smell of striving, competition, ego, ambition, and self-promotion. It is the posture of a life turned inward, a life orbiting around its own gravitational pull. When James says “where self-seeking exists, there is confusion and every evil work,” he is not attacking the wounded conscience or the searching heart. He is describing a soul that has replaced God with self as the center of meaning.

But here is the truth most people never consider:

The moment we try to find ourselves by turning inward, we unintentionally step onto the very ground James is warning us about.

Not because we’re selfish.

But because we’re using the wrong compass.

If your inner world is confused, the last thing you should use to navigate your confusion is… your inner world.

If your identity feels broken, you can’t rebuild it with the pieces of your own brokenness.

If you feel lost, you don’t find the path by asking the lostness for directions.

Identity is not discovered by introspection.

Identity is revealed by the Creator.

Identity is not excavated from the self.

Identity is bestowed by the Savior.

Identity is not uncovered by self-journeying.

Identity is recovered when the Father runs to you.

Our culture tells you to “be your authentic self,” “follow your heart,” “create your own truth,” “discover your inner light,” “reinvent who you are,” and “find your identity within.” And the more you try, the more disoriented you become. Because the more you stare into yourself, the less you see. The more you chase your feelings, the farther they run. The more you try to shape your identity, the more fragile it becomes.

You cannot be the author of a story you did not write.

You cannot be the potter when you are the clay.

You cannot be the definer when you are the defined.

The Prodigal Son tried to “find himself.”

And what did he find?

Nothing.

Nothing but emptiness.

Nothing but hunger.

Nothing but a life stripped down to the raw truth that when you walk away from the Father, you lose the very self you were trying to discover.

But when the Father came running—

when grace found him—

when love named him—

when mercy embraced him—

then his identity returned.

He didn’t find himself.

He was found.

Genesis tells us exactly where identity begins: “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” You cannot find what was never lost. You can only receive what was given. Identity begins in the breath of God, not the breathless striving of the self.

Psalm 139 declares that God knew your unformed substance, wrote your days, and shaped your frame. You don’t discover identity by peeling back the layers of your personality. You discover identity by standing in the light of the One who made you. Because in His light, the shadows retreat, and who you are comes into focus.