Who am I?- a testimony

Circa 2011, 9th grade

If anyone tells you that transitioning from high school to college is an easy process, they are wrong; I’m just saying this straight out. These last few months as I’ve transitioned into life as a full-time university student have been rough- emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. But, why were they so hard? What was so painful about transitioning and changing? I’ve pinpointed it: the difficulty was my identity. Today, I want to share my last few months and some breakthroughs I’ve had, in a testimony-style of writing. In other words, this is a very personal blog post, with a focus on what God has taught me as a person. I hope that it will benefit you all, as I’m sure that what I’ve felt and experienced over the last few months is not unique to my situation.

At every stage of life for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a very specified identity. In elementary school, I was the crazy animal-loving girl (my brother and I owned more pets than we can even comprehend as we look back). Middle school years, I was the upcoming entrepreneur, videotaping and taking pictures of my classmates, editing it all into videos, then selling them DVDs of themselves. Early high school, I was the “Asian”: I learned how to write Chinese characters, wore all sorts of Japanese pop culture accessories (hair bows, animal hats, etc.), obsessed over Hello Kitty, and even “dated” a guy who was part Japanese (another story for another day, yes).

My identity in late high school is the most vivid memory for me, obviously. At the end of this May- my senior year- I was at the top of the leadership program in my school, known there for my clerical skills, strong spiritual life, and ability to start eccentric trends amongst my friends. In marching band, I was one of the only girls in the drum line, which were considered the “cool kids”. I took great pride in my position there, as the friend of every well-liked guy in the drum line and an influential force in the trends that went in and out of band.

But, this year, everything changed. When I look back at the emotion of the past few months, I get a mental image of the saying “I got the rug pulled out from under me”. I was standing solidly on my identity as a strong leader and a popular, but capable teenager. Then, the rug was pulled away and I fell onto the ground, having to start from scratch. None of my previous identities would work for college life. I obviously couldn’t be an outspoken spiritual leader in the classes at my public university, I couldn’t be the cool drummer kid when I really was terrible at playing percussion compared to the other talents at the school, I couldn’t start eccentric trends because I didn’t have any solid friend groups among which to start them. There was nothing left.

On top of all of this, I was (and still am) a little fish in an ocean of people. I hardly ever saw the same people in more than one class and I was coming into contact with hundreds of people every day at school. So, this gave me little to no leverage in forming a projected identity to others, since they only saw me for two hours per week, in the context of a classroom.

Since I based so much of my life on my identity, I felt lost for the entire summer (while anticipating the start of school) and for most of August. I actually used to sit in my room after I got home from school, crying and longing to go back to my marching band and leadership days, more than anything in the world. Nothing felt constant anymore. Marching band and the leadership program simply continued on without me, so I began to feel replaced and unneeded in that way too.

But, God taught me something through this process, as He always does. As Christ-followers, we’re always told something that goes like this, “we change, the world around us changes, but God will never change.”
I used to take this as a trite statement, until this year. See, I was creating a problem for myself in high school; I was basing my identity on movable, changeable things. That was why it was so devastating for me to lose them. But now that the rug has been pulled from underneath my feet and I have no other fallback, I’ve learned to rely on the only thing that won’t change: Jesus Christ, my Savior and Lord.

Last night, I was reading through Colossians and one particular passage showed me what it looks like to apply the concept of relying on Jesus to identity. In other words, what will it look like when my projected identity is Jesus? Here’s the passage:
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
Colossians 3:12, 14

Everything makes sense now. I can’t just go into a college classroom and be known by my music skills, my friends, my trend setting abilities, or anything like that. But now, it doesn’t even seem worthwhile to have my classmates and acquaintances know me as “the Hello Kitty girl” (heaven forbid) or the “percussionist girl”, as I was once known. Now, I want them to know me by something different: my LOVE. I want them to look back on me, maybe just as a classmate that they only knew for one semester or maybe as a longer term acquaintance/friend, and remember me as being compassionate, kind, humble, meek, patient, and full of love. I want them to see me as having an unearthly ability to do all of these things, outside my own nature and dependent on Someone who transcends understanding and means more to me than life itself.

And when my feet are firmly planted on God’s unchanging grace, I will be able to go anywhere and do anything, because I’ll know that He’s there, every step of the way.