By Dr. Saundra Dalton- Smith
Somewhere between the hustle of life’s demands and the lack of quiet moments for your soul, you may have lost something of great worth.
For some, it has been lost for so long they no longer recall possessing this treasure.
Others have lost the ability to recognize its value. This lost treasure is your identity.
When Growth Meets Resistance
People have tried to tame it by refusing to allow you room for growth.
Vision quenchers have tried to extinguish it. Destiny thieves have been attacking it. But still, the fullness of your identity remains in the fabric of your being. Inside of you resides an innate treasure that is unexplainable and unreproducible.
Your identity is as unique as your fingerprint and a paradox. It is both sensitive and strong, powerful and yielded, at peace and at war within you. This exquisite treasure confirms in your innermost being that your life has purpose—you have purpose.
It provides the peace of knowing who you are amid the tension of the unknowns of life.
Shifting Seasons, Shifting Selves
Parents become empty nesters. Wives become widows. Employees retire. The young age, titles change, and roles shift.
We live in a world that is constantly changing. The tension of shifting seasons can leave you feeling like you are about to snap, or it can pull you into the place of purpose and destiny. When life surprises you with change, it can be hard to determine if you are at your breaking point or at the point of breaking through into a deeper understanding of who you are.
You may sense a divine invitation to something, but you do not know the details of the journey or even if it is one you dare embark upon.
This is the pressure of becoming. Much like a grain of sand turns into a pearl through pressure and aggravation, the process of becoming will not always be comfortable.
The tension arises between how you view yourself and how an infinite, all-knowing God sees you, an unraveling of the old that will set the stage for the new. Before we enter the wide-open spaces of grace to be fully who we are, there must be a dismantling of old identities, limiting beliefs, and constraining labels.
Beyond the Lie of “One Thing”
“What if there isn’t one thing?!”
This heart’s cry was a turning point in my understanding of becoming and embracing my God-given identity. I sat in a wicker chair outside a small coffee house chatting with a friend. The temperature had already hit the nineties, making iced coffee the only reasonable option.
With her iced white chocolate mocha in hand, my friend leaned back in her chair with a deep sigh. Her hot pink and orange kimono blew in the breeze as she laid bare her soul.
“Every coach I have ever worked with tells me I must determine the one thing God has placed me on this earth to do,” she said. “But what if there isn’t just one thing? What if there are multiple things? What if I am passionate about one thing and yet also feel called to be a part of something else completely unrelated? How am I supposed to choose?”
Her question tore into my soul, reverberating in the air around me. I too had believed the lie of “one thing.” At the time of our coffee date, I had been working full time for 20 years in clinical practice as a board-certified internal medicine physician.
Since the age of five, all I ever wanted was to be a doctor.
It was all I had ever known as a career, and it had become my identity.
Whether I was socializing in the foyer at my church, sitting in the stands at my son’s basketball games, or pushing a cart through the aisles of the grocery store, I was acknowledged by all who knew me as “Doc.”
I do not think some of those who greeted me even knew my first name!
Medicine was not only my career; it was the box others placed me in. Don’t get me wrong—it was a box I enjoyed.
I had well-defined roles within the box. I felt confident and secure. The box removed the need for me to grow in my knowledge of myself and God. But seasons change and failure to change with them can leave you wanting, empty, and depleted.
When you find yourself in a box without the ability to grow, it becomes a tomb.
No Shame in the Box, But Don’t Stay There
What boxes have you found yourself in?
These boxes can be in the form of a title, career, position, hobby, or anything else that describes what you do but not who you are. What labels have been bestowed upon you by others? Consider the ways people refer to you in conversation.
Maybe you’ve been identified as “the pastor’s wife” or “Joey’s mom” or some other descriptor that places limits on your identity or is dependent upon a specific season. These boxes can be comforting. But when the season changes, it can leave you feeling as if one or more boxes have been stripped away.
This is where the tension arises.
At times our boxes no longer serve us in a new season.
A career, title, role, degree, or label may outlive its usefulness. Consider the boxes you’ve enjoyed during seasons of your life. These roles or titles or descriptors may have made you feel important or known. There is no shame in the box.
The confinement of the box, however, can lead to stagnation, un-fulfillment, restlessness, and depression. The problem is not the box—it is our belief that we must choose only one.
The Stirring That Won’t Be Silenced
What if there is not only one thing? That is the question I want you to consider.
What if the tension you have been feeling is the pressure of being shoved into a box you have outgrown? What if this dissatisfaction is the holy stirring of a spirit that knows it has untapped treasures?
What if the restlessness is not a need to be filled but a need to be emptied of what has been buried inside?
Excerpted with permission from Being Fully Known by Dr. Saundra DaltonSmith.
