I’ve been thinking a lot this weekend on something my pastor said recently:
“{That one thing} doesn’t define you.”
It’s a message I need over and over again in my life, and really one I think so many of us need. It’s a message I think is essential; in other words, when the people I know and love try to live in any other truth, my heart breaks for them.
That choice you made? That tragic thing that someone did to you? It doesn’t define you. I have learned that the grace of God is unbelievably powerful in all things.
And here’s the problem…
It will define you, if you let it. The way we’re wired, the way the world works, an enemy that tries to render us useless or worse, all of these things will work together to try to hold this thing over your head like a dark cloud.
We like to use labels. Victim. Whore. Addict. Deadbeat. Murderer. Worthless. Broken. I know we could all spend a lot of energy on some of the labels we’ve given ourselves, running out of time before we even have to move onto those others have given us.
But that’s not who you are.
You are beautiful. You have purpose. You have a life that may be full of bad choices or terrible things that have happened to you, but you are far more than those things.
The God of grace can restore you to who you are in Him. That thing may mark a specific event in your life where everything changed. That won’t go away, but it doesn’t have to mark the rest of your days.
I think it requires His healing, first – a desperate plea for His grace. And then you know I’m an advocate for counseling. There are professionals that know how to help us deal with the emotions we are otherwise unable to process. Professionals that know how to help us relate to other people, to learn to trust other people. There are Christian counselors who work with us to make sure we’re also working through these events on a spiritual level.
It’s hard work addressing and working through our past, and frankly sometimes it sucks. But there are people I know that need to simply start with this:
{Your sin | that loss | your divorce | that rape | the abuse | that one thing} DOES NOT DEFINE YOU.
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