Dear Girl #03 - You don't have to find yourself, you have to find Christ.
A letter to my younger self and other young girls & women about identity.
*In this series of letters to my younger self is all the wisdom, truth, encouragement, etc, I wish someone had imparted on me when I was growing up from a scared and traumatized little girl to a lost and hurting young woman who didn’t know God. I write these letters in hopes it will bring healing, not only to myself, but to others needing to hear these same words. 🤎 (Spoiler alert: God saved me from the pit!)*
Dear Girl,
I know you’ve wondered over and over who you really are and who you’ll become. The world tells you the answer lies in wait out there, somewhere and you have to do whatever you can to find it. You have to go “find yourself.”
Society says to be anything or anyone in this world you have to know yourself. “Know thyself” is a very popular phrase, widely attributed to Socrates, which was inscribed on the temple of Apollo in Delphi, Greece thousands of years ago. 1
To be clear, wanting to know ourselves is not bad, it’s God-given. Knowledge and understanding of self is necessary to some degree. The problem, is when this search for self-knowledge and understanding becomes completely self-centered and separated from our Creator.
We have become so self-obsessed as a society, tracking every single little thing about ourselves and oversharing on social media. I like habit tracking, but some of the tracking I’ve seen by other people (not people I actually know) is overwhelmingly obsessive. Journaling is all about self-discovery. Weekly and monthly reflections are super self-focused.
I think you get it. It’s all about self, self, self. And where has this led us? Aren’t we more confused and overwhelmed than ever? Aren’t we all aching for something more, bigger? Something outside ourselves? Whether we like to admit it or not. But there is a solution.
Get to know who God is and then you’ll know who you are.
In Psalm 139:13, David praises God:
“For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
Matthew 10:30 says “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” That’s how intimately God knows us because He MADE us. Since He made us, He gets to say who we are. Because He’s all-knowing, He knows us better than we know or could ever know ourselves.
Let’s talk about art for a second. How are we able to recognize a piece of artwork? By knowing the artist who painted it. When we know an artist we get to know their style, techniques and motifs they use in their work, thereby making their artwork recognizable. In other words, we’re able to easily say so and so created this piece of art just by looking at it.
Moreover, it’s the artist/creator who gives the work of art shape, form, direction, meaning, identity.
It’s the same with God and us — we are His artwork so He gives us our identity. “Finding yourself” is the world’s attempt at knowing who you are but you can’t truly know who you are until you know who God is because He made you. Therefore, our identity does not and cannot exist apart from God.
We are a creature and He is our Creator. What’s more, He made you in His image.
Being made in God’s image is special. It does not mean we are just like Him. In other words, we are not all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal, infinite, all-present beings. But we are made to reflect His nature of love, grace, mercy, goodness, truthfulness, rational thought, and relationality.2
When you “find yourself,” you find pride, selfishness, deceit. That is our fallen human nature - a product of sin entering this world. So even though we’re made to reflect God’s beautiful and wonderful attributes, we can only do so imperfectly and with great limits.
Because God created us and made is His image, we can only know ourselves in relation to who God is.
On being a child of God.
It’s common to hear “we are all children of God.” But this is simply not true. We are all God’s creations, but we are not all His children. Being a child of God is a status we lost in the Fall, when sin entered the world. And now the only people who get to call themselves children of God are the ones whom He has adopted. Not because some are better than others, or because only some have earned it, but because we have received the incredible gift of God’s grace - the ability to believe and be saved.
Being a child of God means we have repented of our rebellion against God, and that we believe & proclaim that Jesus Christ is our only hope and salvation. That He is Lord of our lives. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6 ESV).
Keep reading:
Dear Girl #02 - Your Story Is Your Superpower.
A letter to my younger self about accepting and opening up about the past.
Life, Lately - Entry No. 8 { End-of-Year Edition }
A magazine for looking back, reflecting on the past year, and looking ahead.
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Gray, Bradley. What Is “Know Thyself” By Socrates? A Comprehensive Overview. Deep Thinkers. https://www.deepthinkers.net/what-is-know-thyself-by-socrates-a-comprehensive-overview/
What are the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God? Got Questions. https://www.gotquestions.org/communicable-incommunicable-attributes.html