Identity

Join the "community" at The Gypsy Mama here. {Really you should...some of these amazing folks write eloquently and beautifully in those five minutes--more than just this 5-minute freewrite here...}

Identity.

Today, my identity is in my husband's job. It's military spouse appreciation day, and so on this Friday before Mother's Day, I find myself in the camp of milspouses everywhere. Women--and men--married to the military. We join forces and band together as family in the locations where we may not have chosen to raise our children, but here we are anyway.

Forever, my identity is that I'm a mom. That's a HUGE part of who I am. But it's not all I am.

Sometimes my identity has been in my job. My desk right now has stacks of final exams and a fine-line red pen with which to mark them. (And a Coke. Also red.) I can get so wrapped up in my students' work that I somehow lose my own writing voice as I hammer home the rules of the comma splice and the semicolon, giving credit where credit is due, and all those numbers that total up into a grade.

I remember one time telling a pastor search committee interviewing me alongside my husband, asking what I did. I said I was a teacher and a writer. One woman said, "Oh, good, you can take over the greeting card ministry." One of many clues that the church was not a good fit for me.

The hardest part is figuring out my identity in Christ. Chosen. Loved beyond all reason. Purposed. Knit together. Daughter of a King. I'll never understand why I was chosen and why He loves me so, but I'm ever, ever grateful.

**and that's the end of my 5 minutes!**