Hidden Identities: Daughter

When I read the Divergent series, the setting captured my imagination – a city organized into five factions based on personalities and giftings. I can look back now and recognize that the main character, Tris, struggled with her identity. While she respected the selfless ways of her faction of birth, Abnegation, something inside her knew she was made for more. 

But when she moved to the soldier-like faction, Dauntless, she quickly realized she didn’t really fit-in there either. Throughout the story, Tris battled lies, corrupt leaders, and her own fears to finally discover her truest identity.

Much like Tris, we can have seasons or even entire lifetimes of not knowing ourselves. We might feel like Beatrice (Tris) in Abnegation who blends in with everyone else in her gray suit and plain hair – lost in the crowd, hidden, unable to be different or make a difference. Or perhaps we feel more like tattooed-Tris in Dauntless, wearing her stunning black and stepping into a role already carved out for her – stuck in our labels and over-defined by who we’re with or what we do. 

As we search to know our True Selves, it’s important to name where we are and determine how we’ve been pigeon-holed into false identities. Knowing what identity we carry right now will help us move toward a fuller understanding of who we actually are. Yet, this is just one layer to peel back. Many more await us – like the layer of knowing Whose we are. And the layer of knowing what we are.

Let’s start peeling!

Where We Are  

My twentieth year on this good earth handed me a choice. I could continue to flounder under false – aka: broken – identities, or I could push pause on life and look for what was really true about me. I’m forever grateful that my younger self chose the latter. It wasn’t pretty, but in the only way I knew how, I began taking stock of where I was and how I got there. 

I was lost. Lost from God. Lost from me. I kept hearing myself tell the people around me, “but that’s not who I am.” Or, “I wish you had known me two years ago” – because those last years of high school I felt like ‘myself’. Confident. Relatively successful. Supported. I’d worn my labels with pride – performer, leader, achiever. I’d loved my friend group who reflected so much of who I thought I was.

But at one of the largest universities in the nation, I got lost in the crowd. I had no labels, no achievements. People didn’t know me – who I was or what I was capable of. And as my relationship with my boyfriend started falling apart, I felt the last vestiges of who I had been slip away. Remorse over life choices rose as self-confidence plummeted.

It’s no coincidence that on my darkest day, I reached for my Bible and read these words:

Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.
    Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
    I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

Isaiah 41:10 NLT

The darkness lightened a bit. The heaviness lifted a little. 

And I began naming where I was: walking with fear, held captive by discouragement, wallowing in weakness, saddled to defeat, far from God. Little by little I sought God. In doing so, I began to find myself. 

Sometimes we lose sight of ourselves or realize we haven’t really known our True Selves. Other times we acknowledge that somewhere along the way our identities were broken – smashed by trauma or loss or lies. But the truth in it all is that “our identity problems stem from not knowing who God is!”¹

And just as ‘finding ourselves’ lies in the process of getting to know our Heavenly Father, the answer to fixing our broken identities is bigger than us picking ourselves up by our bootstraps. It’s more than finding the right role or spouse or job or house. 

Our healing comes only from Christ Himself. 

Just as I discovered that spring semester, we must step into the light that Christ shines upon us and within us so that all our false notions of self can be brought out of the darkness. All our brokenness will find healing as we allow God’s holy rays to expose what needs to be revealed, named, made whole. 

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord… For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

2 Corinthians 4:5-6 ESV

It may feel scary or even impossible to allow all that we are on the inside to be exposed. Maybe the thought of it triggers fear or guilt or shame – and that’s because for too long we’ve allowed our identities to be defined by the “disoriented culture” of our world.² For too long we’ve let our fear-based feelings tell us who we are. But now is the time to grab hold of the fact that “what God says about [us] is the TRUTH!”¹ 

Friends, when we remember Who it is that shines His light into our shadowy spaces, we recognize this is the only good and holy way to name where we are. There’s no condemnation in Christ, nothing to be ashamed of. There’s only love and grace and gobs of healing in the light. So, instead of resisting such exposure, let’s embrace it.

Who He Is

When we read the Gospel of John, we become aware of Jesus naming Himself. Just as God answered Moses’ ‘who am I’ question with His own “I AM” name, Jesus intentionally speaks who He is with “I am” titles – seven in all. Because He wants His disciples to be able to stand firm in what they know about Him, He offers multiple monikers for Himself as a means of anchoring them – and us – in the truth of who He really is. 

The night of His arrest, Jesus wants His disciples to know that He’s leaving to go prepare a place for them (John 14:3) – and that confuses them. So, He assures them, “You know the way to the place where I am going” (v.4). 

They know the way. Why? Because they know Him:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him” (vv.6-7). 

Jesus is The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Because we know Him, we already know the Father. As such, we have everything we need to be sure of who we are and what our roles are in the world.

When Jesus died, He rewrote humanity’s identity.¹ No longer are we defined by sin. No longer are we known by the slanderous aliases the slippery serpent wants to pin on us. We are Christ’s. And He has left us so many nuggets of truth to clue us into who He is – so that as we get to know Him, we’ll discover who we are.

Whose We Are 

Jesus assures us that we are the Father’s! And He demonstrates our status with the Father on the day He looks upon the woman who had bled for twelve years – who in faith touched Jesus’ robe in order to find healing. When Jesus turns around to find the one who had touched Him, He doesn’t yell at her for making Him unclean or chastise her for such boldness. Instead He simply says:

“Daughter, your faith has healed you.”

Mark 5:34

By singling out this lost, broken woman and giving her a name, Jesus wants us to hear Him say the same to us. We are the Father’s. Our name is Daughter. 

In the family of God, we are given identity, place, provision, and responsibility.¹ “Being a daughter of the King isn’t so much about who we are but who He is!”¹ We know that He is Creator – the One who made the earth and continues to hold it all together (Colossians 1:16-17). We know He raised Jesus from the dead and has lifted Him into the throne room to rule over everything and everyone (1 Corinthians 15:4). 

Knowing our Father in these ways helps us see ourselves more clearly. Where pride would like for us to be God, we now can see our role is not Creator or Holder-Together-Of-All-things, Resurrect-er or Ruler. It’s simply and beautifully Daughter. 

And what a relief that is – because “WE CAN’T HOLD THE WORLD TOGETHER like Jesus can. The pressure is off to be everything to everyone, to do it all, to keep the world spinning.”¹ In that way, we can find rest in our identity, Daughter.

Lest we worry that we’ll get lost in the crowd of Daughters, know that every one of us has the thumbprint of our Father – unique in our individual ways.¹ And each of our “delicate, inner parts of our bodies” have been knit in our mothers’ wombs – wonderfully complex and marvelous (Psalm 139:13-14 NLT). We have not been “made to be like everyone else” but to be like Christ in all the ways He’s made us who we are.¹ 

Because we are His Daughters.

What We Are

While we may revel in the fact that as Daughters we’re given position and provision, let’s not miss the fact that we have responsibilities. In other words, our Father has not only told us who we are, but what we are. 

“Christians focus a lot on whose we are and who we are but not nearly enough on what we are. So what are we? We are gloriously fashioned, miraculously created human beings; which means we are bearers of the divine image.”³  

It’s the truth – we were formed from dust, but that’s not how God left us. He breathed life into our lungs. We are living, breathing miracles of God who have been given the capacity to do “miraculous God-like things,” to “live in union with the God of the cosmos,” and to “bring other human beings into that communion.”³ 

This is what we are. As such, we know it’s our role to “confer inestimable worth and dignity…upon our fellow divine image-bearers.”³ Friends, just as we must embrace the healing light of God’s love, we must take hold of this responsibility. And, we must guard against believing that we are not enough. When we speak phrases like “I’m only human,” we’re no longer embracing our miraculous image-bearing personhood. 

Rather, we’ve mistakenly stepped into self-abnegation. And when we do that, we never feel like enough. We feel as though we should be more. Self-abnegation may give us the false sense of selflessness and humility, but what we’re really doing is denying what God has created us to be:

“unbelievable, inconceivable, unrepeatable miracles of God”³ 

THIS is what we are – because of Whose we are.

Wow! We’ve peeled back some mighty layers this week, my friends. May we step into the revealing, healing light of Christ so that we may know where we are on this journey of finding our True Selves. May we continue getting to know The-Way-The-Truth-The-Life so that we can better embrace who we are in Him. May we let go of all false humility and take hold of what we are in Christ – image-reflectors of our Father – so that we’ll believe that as Daughters of the King, we are always enough and that we’ll always have what we need to speak truth and life and love to every other image bearer on the planet. 

Father God, we pause. We reflect on where we are. We name where we find ourselves in this moment – lost, afraid, confused, distraught, distracted… And we turn to look to You, the One who formed us in His image. The One who has given us identity, place, and provision as His Daughters. We rest in the truth that we are “unbelievable, inconceivable, unrepeatable miracles of God.”³ Lord Jesus, thank You for making sure that your words of truth have made it to our ears – You are the Way. In You we are able to know the Father, to be with the Father, to be assured of having a place in His family. You are the Truth. In You we can know for certain who we are because You’ve given us your Word. All we have to do is watch what You did and listen to all You said, and we’ll know Whose we are. You are the Life. In You we are able to live out the promise You gave to all believers – that You came so that we can have life abundantly. Holy Spirit, we ask that You would multiply our faith so that, like the bleeding woman, we can find rest and restoration in the presence of our Savior. May we receive the truth Jesus spoke over all of us on that day – we are beloved daughters. Break the bonds that hold us in our broken identities. Free us to be our True Selves so that we can become image bearers of God in the world. In Jesus’ name, amen. 
(Inspired by Genesis 1:27; Mark 5:34; John 14:6-7; John 10:10; Galatians 3:5; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Ephesians 4:24)

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – Gretchen Saffles in the Introduction of her Bible study, Redefined: A Bible Study on Identity in Christ; also pp.108, 109, 111, 120, 130
• 2 – Dan Wilt, Wake Up Call, 5/12/24 
• 3 – JD Walt, Wake Up Call, 11/15/23, based on Acts 14:14-18 
• Our new Hidden Identities playlist has a Charity Gayle song, “New Name Written Down in Glory,” that HITS TODAY’S THEME so well. Just take a listen to its rhythmic bridge: “I am who I am because the I AM tells me who I am.” And, in Brandon Lake’s song, “Tear Off the Roof,” we are reminded that we “didn’t come here to hide in the crowd” but to live in the power of the name of Jesus and His presence, which is “heart-healing, hell-stealing, life changing!!!”
• I hope you received your September newsletter, The Abiding Life — and if you didn’t, email me. I’ll get it sent to you. I so appreciate the gift of being able to process a little more deeply the idea of identity with you. Did you resonate more with masks, monikers, or the moon? 🙂 You can subscribe here if you’d like to receive future issues.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

• As we lean into the process of learning more about ourselves — our true identities in Christ — we are going to step into the spiritual practice of REST. It struck me this week that one reason we live so tired is because we’re trying to carry it all. By ourselves. As though we were God. Hear it from Ms. Beth (Moore):
  
  “Don’t panic or sink into despair or imagine it’s all over. Sometimes all that is wrong with us is we’re tired. Rest your mind and, if possible, your body, and, in faith, hand your concerns entirely over to Jesus for a little while. …You’re not on your own. It’s not all up to you” (Beth Moore, Align: 31 Days of Prayer, p.54).
  • It’s not up to us. We can’t hold the world together — but we can hold onto Jesus. And in Him, we find our rest.
  • This week, as we ponder where we are, Whose we are, and what we are, may we find true rest as we lay down all the false and broken identities we’ve been carrying. May we find the relief we’ve been seeking as we allow Jesus to carry the yoke with us. May we find refuge in these words:
    
    “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28-30 MSG
• And while it’s not a spiritual practice or rhythm, I invite you to share this site. This is such an important topic that I want as many people as possible to join us here. Together we’ll find support and encouragement and the simple truth that we are not alone in our struggles.

Featured art, “Woman Touches Jesus Hem,” by Printable Truth on Etsy.
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