Who I Am

This week I have been thinking a lot about who I am.........................

All of those little identities that the world has given me or that I have given myself.

I think back to high school and I remember that shy little girl, the one who lived out in the country but had to travel to town to attend the only high school. That girl studied and worked hard to get every grade that she got, but was often made fun of by her classmates. As a teenager she never got asked out on dates, wasn't invited to the prom, and never really felt like she belonged in the group of students with whom she was placed by the school system. That girl is still right there inside me. She has never attended any of her high school reunions because she was never really sure that she would be accepted or welcomed.

That girl grew up and went to college, determined to show everyone that she really was smart; she really did deserve the accolades and honors that were given to her. She graduated college as the top female education student and then she headed off to HER first classroom of students. That first year was rough. Kentucky had instituted a new teacher intern program which required a visiting college professor to observe each teacher and offer critiques of their lesson planning and instruction. Though the young teacher felt like she was doing a good job, that professor never seemed to have a good thing to say about the teaching that was going on. The teacher felt good about it, the principal said that she was doing a fine job, but the professor always seemed to find things that needed to be "fixed". Even after 29 years of teaching, that struggling young teacher is still right here beside me. She shows up every time I get observed and every time that my school institutes a new program. That young teacher is always wondering, "Am I doing a good job? Why can't I reach them? What am I doing wrong?"

There has been uncertainty and doubt throughout my life: the new wife, the young mother who had very little experience with babies, the mother of a teenage girl with all of the emotional upheavals that go along with puberty. I have always been a bit of a perfectionist- struggling to be the perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect teacher...... Of course, I always fell short.

This uncertainty and self doubt has sometimes even permeated my spiritual life. I sometimes find myself asking, "Why would God use little old me? I am just a plain old country girl- I have no great stories to tell. I have no great skills that God can use." It is then that God gives me the boost of confidence that I need.

God tells me, in John 1:12,

¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—

I do believe. I have given my life to him, I AM a child of God and that is the GREATEST identity that I can have. 

As for my doubt about the quality of myself and my abilities, the Bible says, in Ephesians 2:10,

¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

When I read this verse, I am reminded of a t-shirt I once saw that read, "God don't make no junk." I have to keep telling myself that God did make me, he has shaped me and molded me, with a job in mind. Even with my little quirks and doubts, THAT is who I am: God's work, his product, perfectly shaped by him. He accepts me, just as I am. Perhaps now, I need to work at doing the same.