It’s Friday. You know what that means. Five minutes fast and furious and uncut. This week’s word: Identity
“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” – Brennan Manning
The letters are slanted slashing violently across the page. All sharp edges and fury. I’ve kept boxes full of journals stacking year upon year. So many pages of why, scribbled in rants all pointing at a God I could not trust. A God who never gave me a tidy answer to the wounds I bore in shame.
Why didn’t I get a chance at innocence? Why did that get robbed from me at such a tender age, behind closed doors? Would I ever be clean?
And when I could find no fair answer as to why the image in the mirror looked back at me defiled and filthy, guilty and wretched, I raged all the more. This war with God, this heart turned hard and phobic.
How could He not protect me? Why if all they say is true, do these scars remain? Why does this world suffer and groan and tremble with pain? Doesn’t He claim to be a God who heals? Who redeems?
But this mess that I am, how can there be beauty in that?
Where is the glory of the frail and broken?
And when nothing smoked, drank, bought, or accomplished would quell the pain, I fell to my knees in years of alter call pleadings for salvation that never seemed to come. For a redemption moment that never took hold. I could convince my mind to believe but my heart still beat out that I did not belong. That I didn’t feel any different.
I dug in and worked this Christianity harder. I would pray prayers with big theological words and scripture, I would check off the list of bible reading and journaling happy God thoughts, I would behave. I would try hard to make God love me. I would join small groups and even lead them, spout theology and witness, all while silently repeating salvation prayers like a transaction that kept getting denied.
I still don’t have a moment. There was no one prayer that finally took hold. No lightbulb came on or foreign language burst from my lips.
Instead, my story is one of minute moments strung together over my life, each drawing me further out. Years being stacked, not orderly or linear but beautiful as a masterpiece chiseled rough but worn smooth as cool marble. Steps ascending to the heavens, not attempted by my feet, which so often fall but a staircase for Jesus to come low and touch me.
To give me a new identity. To call my name, beloved.
On Fridays over at The Gypsy Mama, a group of people who love to throw caution to the wind and just write gather to share what five minutes buys them. Just five minutes. Unscripted. Unedited. Real.
Your words. This shared feast. Hop over and share your five minutes on Identity
WOW! I know. Thanks.
Maggie S. recently posted..New Season of Life; Handling Blessing
Thanks Maggie. You are definitely beloved.
This reminds me of David in the Psalms! David had no pretences with God… if he was afraid – he told God so! If he was angry at injustice – he did not hide it.
Thank you for being true to your identity.
Wendy recently posted..Identify yourself!
. I think God is big enough to handle our questions and our humanity in the midst of our faith. It makes us stronger to cast our insecurities and anguish on Him and even if we aren’t answered immediately or ever, we grow closer because we know His grace covers it all. Even the ugly parts. Thanks so much for visiting here and for sharing.
Oh, Alia, how I want to run to you and just give you the biggest hug. You so openly share your heart with such courage. Thank you, thank you for letting me get to know you more and more. It’s an honor.
Amy Tilson recently posted..Five Minute Friday – Identity
Thanks Amy. I could use a big hug now and then.
I’m honored to have you along as a reader. Thanks friend.
You have such a beautiful, beautiful gift. Thank you for sharing it and your heart with us. Reading your words always gives me courage, encouragement, and reminds me how much I am loved by Him.
Wow, thanks Allison. That means the world to me. I am so glad my words help you know how loved your are. That is a gift to me. So blessed to have you as a reader.
“Beloved” ~what a beautiful word, what a beautiful miracle, what a beautiful truth! So thankful that identity has seeped through you! And you are both beautiful and beloved. Thank you for your honesty, friend.
Deb Weaver recently posted.."Workbench"
Thanks Deb. It’s a process for sure, but I am grasping what it truly means little by little. Thankful for you, as always.
That was a gorgeous post. Loved it. So real and so relatable.
Janice recently posted..Bedtime Story
Thanks Janice. Glad to have you share in my 5 minutes again.
Thanks for the lovely comments you left on my blog. I love your middle name by the way
Wendy recently posted..Identify yourself!
Thank you for this gift of your vulnerability in sharing those places of broken identity — those places where you were robbed and the enemy taunted with lies — and that very incremental journey toward life through which God has carried you. As you say, bit by bit, day after day strung together to see your identity as, above all else, one who is loved. It reminds me of John who defined his identity as the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved. Above all, loved. Thank you for this, Alia.
Thanks Ashley, Yes, this life has been a journey of being redefined and renamed. I’m glad to have people along on their own journeys sharing in this grace and growing together. Above all, loved. Yup, that says it.
I often compare my testimony to others’. Some have said they have this amazing holy experience. Just like you said, I still don’t have a moment. Now that time has gone by since I gave my whole heart to the Lord, I look back and see the amazing things he has done through me and I want to laugh and cry and the same time. I am stopping by from Inspired by Family Mag where I read your “Don’t Parent Out of Pride” Post and loved that one too! Thanks for sharing your beautiful words. Hope to see you at True Aim.
Tulip recently posted..The Mom Who Cried Wolf!
So true. I have amazing moments in retrospect when I look back and see God’s hand at work in circumstances and through the gentle handling of my heart but it’s a process where I don’t think I’ll ever fully arrive at. For me, my faith is a series of steps, walked with God. Sometimes aware of my surroundings and direction and other times feeling lost and unsure, yet knowing He is there.
Thanks for stopping by here. I always love to have new readers.
Thank you for sharing your TRUE heart, always. I love your honesty, Alia Joy!♥
I’m trying to write the “5 min. Fri” on my own when I can…have no place to post it except my ‘Word’ program. –good rthing, I’m thinkin’!!
It’s a GOOD challenge: to write, not censor, then read it over… then I read YOURS!!
You have had so much pain in your life… but seeing you from HERE, I see such perseverance!! LOOK at all that you have Survived!!– and continue to!! Wow…God is holding you.
Maybe it has been stubbornness or willfulness or anger –ALONG WITH all of that hurt, as you have fought the battle to get out of the past and the way it formed you… but you HAVE a strength that many Don’t.
It took so many years for me to face the breaking, crumbling foundation that the Lord told me was faulty. He said it would ALL have to be removed, then rebuilt. Oh, how painful a process. YET, treasure, too!!
Cuz He has helped me discover that one day, there does come some ‘distance’ between the pain and wounds of the past that gives me the ability to see beyond it! –to ‘comfort others with the same comfort that the Lord comforted ME with’. Oh, hell-yeah, I’d rather have skipped the pain!!! But I wouldn’t have the knowing, the identification, the stamp of God’s grace that says He can heal, He can rescue, He can bring an EXPERIENCE of Love to a broken heart and life. The memories and sometimes still–PAIN– they’re there. But God has put me under the shadow of His wing!!–and it’s Not a dark place, but a SAFE one.
In YOU, I see a lovely, warm, intelligent, woman to whom God has given very special gifts –and YOU USE THEM!!! Praise GOD! Because you are using your gifts the best way you can, striving to develop and hone them into God’s tools… with the result that MANY of us are blessed!!
♥
Keep on KEEPIN’ it REAL, Alia!!♥ You are HIS workmanship…He develops you and reshapes what was shattered. It might look a bit like a mixed up collage in parts, (AT Some MOMENTS)—from Your perspective, but it’s just DESIGN, POTENTIAL, LIFE in Every fragment from HIS! and whether He uses you as a collage, or as mini-”instagrams”–He definitely has a VERY special, gentle ‘use’ for you that is all about the Love and acceptance– not ‘using’, as you knew it from back then.
I’m so very glad that at some point, you realized that you could accept His GIFT, and BE accepted, by Him.♥
love an’ ((huggs))
Pam