The Things that Describe Don’t Define You: Chiseling Away at Your Identity

A spouse’s betrayal shakes your world. My husband’s sudden abandonment rattled my sense of safety, my place in the world, and my very core. Literally overnight I lost my role as wife and full time mother as well as the person I had believed was my best friend.

I didn’t know it was going to get worse too.

One day while still reeling from a fresh and frightening divorce, foreclosure, and near homelessness, I walked to my mailbox and withdrew a letter. The letter was from the archdiocese announcing my ex had filed for an annullment.

It was addressed to me in my maiden name. The institution that had witnessed our vows and promised to stand firm for those vows instead defaulted to using my maiden name. It felt as though the very name I had used for 14 years and built my life around had been taken from me.

It was a blow and another betrayal in what had become a long line of betrayals of justice over the past few years.

Before even speaking with anyone at the archdiocese, I had been stripped of even my name. I remember staring at the paperwork and thinking, I no longer was my married name, but I knew I was also no longer that naive young woman I had been when I last used my maiden name.

Stuck in an identity-less limbo, I realized I had not only lost my husband, a good part of my children and being the mother I’d wanted to be, my home, my security, my future, and so much more.

I had even lost my name.

I literally didn’t know who I was or what I should call myself when I met someone new.

I made plenty of mistakes in those days, in part, because I looked at identity wrong.

I saw identity as something to put on. I saw it as someone I would become.

I defined myself through roles.

• I was a mother, teacher, friend, daughter.
• I cooked, cleaned, shopped, chauffeured.
• I studied, worked, learned, passed.
• I grew, rose, overcame, became.
• I coached, taught, spoke, wrote.
• I travelled, visited, adventured, explored.

I did a lot of amazing things in those years.

I also made a lot of mistakes.

I defined myself by what I did, where I was, and who seemed to care about me.

And too many times, I lay my head down on the pillow alone at night to think: “Now what? What did I do today that showed I am worth something? What do I have to do tomorrow?”

I was barely keeping my head above water while trying to cram more goodness into my life. I was trying to find who I was supposed to be. I was trying to prove my worth even to myself.

That kind of life is exhausting. It is unsustainable.

Eventually, you have to take a step back and ask what God wants from you in all this.

Who You Are at the Core

A few years ago, I saw a photo that helped change my perspective. The photo showed the figure of a man made of clay. The bottom half of the man had giant overweight legs, hips, waist, and belly. The top half showed six pack abs, a determined, chiseled face, and sculpted arms that were chipping away at the bottom half. The man was obviously working to free himself from what literally weighed him down – himself!

It made me think of who I am and what I need to strip from myself.

When we think about self esteem, self confidence, and self worth, we often think about our negative self talk and the labels others have placed on us.

I know intellectually I should discard harsh words the degrade who I am. I can intellectually reject labels of divorce, rejected, unwanted. I can try to change how I see myself through body positivity and affirmations. I can do things others would never do and be admired by thousands.

But what if that’s not enough?

What if even the good labels we put on ourselves fall short?

What if even the good things we use to define ourselves can become obstacles when we make them the source of our identity?

Who am I if I am not, teacher, daughter, sister, friend, wife, mother?

Who am I when my vocation is gone and those blessings sometimes feel like curses?

The man trapped in clay realized he needed to change. He realized he needed to remove what was weighing him down so the person underneath could be revealed.

Perhaps that is what it means to be human.

We were not merely created to discover an earthly vocation or purpose. We were created for God.

Although these are good and often holy pursuits, they are not the reason for our existence.

The Catechism tells us we are made to know, love, and serve God in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next.

If we can do that in our current vocation, that is wonderful and we should rejoice in that.

We should also explore who we are without that reassurance. Who will you be when even the good and holy labels are stripped away.

Is that not how we will appear before Jesus one day?

We will not show up with a list of cool things we’ve done or a video of what great teachers, wives, and mothers we will be.

We will show up empty of ourselves.

We hope to show up full of Him.

I think this helps me understand part of what the Church teaches about Purgatory.

It is the detachment from our disordered need for certain outcomes, people, and labels and a movement toward total reliance on and love for Our Lord.

It is the preparing of the soul for the wedding feast, a dressing stripped away of fancy cover-ups in favor of full transparency.

It is, in part, seeing ourselves, in all our good and bad and being eternally grateful to be chosen, not as teacher, wife, or mother, but as Beloved.

St. Ignatius of Loyola said, “Few souls understand what God would accomplish in them if they were to abandon themselves unreservedly to him and if they were to allow his grace to mold them accordingly.”

God’s grace wasn’t visible in that chiseling man sculpture, but I believe it was there, quietly forming, strengthening, and revealing what was underneath.

Forming a new identity after devastating wounds – abandonment, divorce, betrayal, infidelity, estrangement, or other scars of the heart – doesn’t require reinventing yourself in the eyes of the world.

It requires gentleness and steadfastness, patience and fortitude. It requires silence and trust. It requires knowing your eternal purpose and choosing to move toward it, not under your own power but in cooperation with grace and submission to what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God Himself, to share in His divine creation, to Love and be Loved as He does.

This is the true identity struggle.

It is a work of a lifetime; it is an exercise of the heart as much as the mind.

So if you are struggling to redefine yourself, don’t aim low.

Rally against the injustice. Enjoy blessings when they come. Build beautiful things. Love deeply. Serve generously.

But don’t hang your identity on any of them.

Instead seek identity in Christ remembering that this life is not a once-and-done acceptance of Christ and identity switch.

It is a beautiful, lifelong surrender to His presence and His transforming Grace until, gratefully and joyfully, you see yourself as His Beloved.

God Bless…

Kerri

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