Guest Blog: Haley

It's rare that I find a really, really good girlfriend at rapid speed. It usually takes me a while to warm up, to open up and genuinely engage in friendship with other women. So, when Haley and I hung out the first time over a couple of drinks at a local pub and TOTALLY hit it off as friends, I was floored. She was honest, open, vulnerable, hilarious, friendly, and she was a closet Lady Gaga fan. The rest is history really... albeit a short, 3 month history, but history nonetheless.

Haley has a brilliant mind. She asks good, deep questions and ponders the things that affect our hearts and spirits. She has a refreshing perspective on so many things, so she was an obvious choice for a guest blog spot here this week. She's got a blog of her own, and you can follow her on Twitter (@haleykristine). I hope you enjoy her post about honesty and the things we allow to define us.

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When Nish asked me if I would write a guest post for her blog while she and her fam were in the midst of moving, I said yes—obviously.  And after I said yes I thought, “what on earth am I going to write about!?”  Last night as I was washing my face (I get all my good ideas in the bathroom) I was thinking of that scene in the Anne of Avonlea movie where Gilbert tells Anne he always thought she should write about Avonlea.  I’m pretty sure he insults one of Anne’s many gallant heroes in the process and Anne gets her feelings hurt, but that’s not really the point.  The point is that Gilbert, in all his dreamy eyed, Canadian accented wisdom, was telling Anne to write what she knew.

What I know these days is that in the past fourteen months or so I’ve taken apart most of what I thought I knew about myself.  I realized didn’t have much to work with because I wasn’t really sure who I was.  I also learned that rather than take responsibility for who I want to be, for who I believe God’s made me to be, I have been content to put that responsibility on other people.  I have asked OTHER people to tell me who I am.  I have asked OTHER people—my mother, my friends, my boyfriends, my family members— to name me.

My church had a women’s forum about a month ago, and one of the topics we discussed was naming.  I made a list of names that other people had given me.  What I realized as I sat looking at my list (broken, unworthy, ugly, fat, unloveable, abandonable) was that other people may have given me those names, but I took them on as my own and I began to call myself those names.

There is comfort in asking other people to name us.  Because if they are wrong we are not to blame, they are.  Or at least it’s easy to pretend it’s their fault, as long as we conveniently forget that we’re the ones who asked them to name us, who took on the names they called us, in the first place.  But you know, or at least I knew, that even with all my attempts to discover who I was through other people, I was really the one who didn’t know who I was.

What I am learning about that list of names is that they are not who I am, God did not name me those things.  I know this intellectually.  I know that God does not call me broken because Jesus was sent to bind up the brokenhearted.  I know that I am not unworthy because through Christ I am made worthy.  I know that God does not call me ugly or fat.  I know that God loves me more than anything and nothing can separate me from that love.  I know that He will never leave me or forsake me.  The problem with intellectual knowledge is that it is not heart knowledge.

I cannot force my identity in Christ to become heart knowledge.  I cannot MAKE myself believe that God names me something other than what I have named myself.  I have to live into His love for me.  I have to LIVE into the names He calls me.  And to do that I have to come honestly before Him and admit that I CANNOT become who He made me to be on my own.  I CANNOT be who He made me to be WITHOUT HIM.  HE leads me and HE names me.

Lord, give me ears to hear You.

What about you?  What have other people named you?  What have you named yourself?  Who does God say that you are?