Daughter

August 10, 2017August 10, 2017 / trotters41 / Leave a comment

by Elizabeth

photo 1 (1)

This picture. I love it. Not because it’s particularly elegant or beautiful, but because of what it means to me. It means so much to me, in fact, that I taped it to our home school wall so I would remember and not forget.

We’d been studying China, and the art materials came from our curriculum’s China Kit. We mixed the ink ourselves, used special brushes on special paper, and stamped our work in red at the bottom.

Now, I’m not particularly artistic, but I thought I could paint some crude mountains. Mountains speak deeply to me about who God is, about His power and love, about His majestic greatness and His vast creativity. And they give me a place to meet God, in much the same way that mountains gave the ancient people of Israel a place to meet God.

The kit provided about a dozen examples of Chinese characters to try our hand at copying. Most of the characters concerned everyday family relationships. Brother, sister, Mother, Father. But when I saw the character for Daughter, I immediately knew it was the one that belonged on my mountain picture.

Of all the characters, it was the one I was drawn to most strongly. Magnetically almost. More than Wife and more than Mother, the way I most strongly identify myself is as a Daughter. Not necessarily as a daughter of my biological parents, though that’s true too, but as a Daughter of God. Most of my daily responsibilities revolve around Wife and Mother, but “Daughter” is, at my core, how I see myself and how I define myself.

Daughter: it’s who God says I am.

And Son or Daughter, if you are in Christ, is who God says you are, too. Your sonship is more important than your career, more important than your ministry, more important than your marriage, and more important than your parenting. It’s more important than any reputation or renown. It is an eternal identity, and valuable beyond measure. You have been born again. You have been adopted into God’s family. You are Sons and Daughters of the King above all Kings.

Remember this.

(Originally shared on Facebook)

The Screeching Voice of Lack and the Bounty of Jesus

July 15, 2016 / trotters41 / 7 Comments

by Elizabeth

I’ve been stumbling around for weeks now, gathering my identity from the things other people might say about me. I’ve been scooping it up from my deepest fears of failure, harvesting it from my ripening field of inadequacies. But you know the thing is, I know better than this. I know better than to do this; yet I did it anyway. I listened to the voice of darkness, that screeching voice of lack inside my own head, and I flagrantly disregarded the bounty of Jesus and the abundance of His love.

I didn’t know where to begin again. I knew I’d misplaced my identity, but I was scared to approach God with my missteps of belief and doubt. How could I lose that precious gift of identity in Christ, after searching so long and so hard to find it before?? But one day last week I finally worked up the courage to ask God what He thinks of me. Sincerely expecting a reply, I ventured a quiet and tentative, “God, who do you say I am?” And Jesus, mysterious Son of Man that He is, simply and immediately asked back, “Who do you say I AM?”

“Who do YOU say I AM???”

Not an answer did the Promised One provide; merely, like so many instances in the Gospels, another question. Who do I say Jesus is?? Because maybe that’s where I went wrong, forgetting who Jesus is. Because maybe I don’t have to ask so many questions about myself, if I know the answer to the question about Jesus. And maybe I don’t have to get lost in my own dark, dangerous head, if I can get lost in the majesty and glory of the Creator, of the Redeemer, of the Comforter, of the Trinity.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s a legitimate question to ask “Who does God say I am?” But now I know it’s just as legitimate to be asked by Him — as Jesus asked Peter and the other disciples — “Who do you say I AM?” Because maybe, just maybe, that’s the question that can transfer my focus from Self onto Savior. And maybe, just maybe, the moment I answer that question is the moment the clouds will start to lift.

Turns out, the way up out of the pit isn’t to believe in myself better, it’s to believe in Someone Better. For as Peter answered, I believe Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and HIS identity alone is what holds sway over the clinging darkness.

Linking up with Velvet Ashes

Child of God

March 22, 2016August 10, 2017 / trotters41 / 5 Comments

by Elizabeth

I love the song “No Longer Slaves” by Jonathan and Melissa Helser. Absolutely love it. I love it because it sings the truth over us about who we are: children of God.

I wept over that song when we sang it in church last Sunday. That’s because in the last year or so I’ve really come to understand that my truest and deepest identity is as a child of God. It’s who I am — because of who HE is — and it’s the truest thing about me.

I know now that being a child of God is what defines me more than anything else. More than being a woman, more than being a wife, more than being a writer, more than being a mom, more than being a TCK.

But here’s the thing: it’s not like I wasn’t taught this. I was searching through my wallet this week for a card that I’d misplaced, and in one section I found a bunch of small cards and family photos that I hadn’t looked at in years. On one of them is this message from my mom:

“Dear Liz, Remember who you are — a child of God! Love, Mom & Dad.”

She wrote that note to me in high school (maybe college), and I’ve kept it in my wallet all these years. Why? I don’t know. But I’m glad I did. Because it shows me that the Truth was there all along, it just hadn’t sunk deep enough into my marrow.

But it has now, and as Melissa Helser practically screams in “No Longer Slaves,” nothing can change the fact that:

I AM A CHILD OF GOD!