Changing Identities, Unchanging God (FREE PDF)
September 2024 I was asked to share at our church’s ladies conference, and felt so honored. The theme was “Who You Say I Am: Changing Identities, Unchanging God.” Since they knew my story of a big changing identity in 2020 returning to America from Brazil, they thought I would be a good fit. It was definitely one of those “You get more than you give” situations, and the time went so well they asked me to do a second time for those who hadn’t been able to make it the first time- which was today. I am amazed to look back and see that God has continued to work in my life—about this specific instance—even since September. I wanted to share the booklet and testimony here as well.
This is a PDF meant to be printed front and back on three pages, making a 12 half-size page booklet. We did this two different ways: a Friday night (the first half of the booklet—up to the “Identity Crisis” page) and Saturday morning (“Identity Crisis” page to the end), or Just Saturday morning, where the first two pages were “Pre-homework” and we started on the “Mind Map of Me” page.
Mind Maps Activity (4 pages): we quickly went through these pages as we talked about what Identity is, examples of where we might find our identity, filling out the mind map of me with words we feel define/describe us, filling out the mind map of others (We left our book at our seat and all got up with our pens, going around to the other seats and filling in one of their bubbles with how we perceived them), and lastly: filling out the mind map of me as the image of Christ (Who Christ says I am—with some hints from Disney princesses on the last page).
As an introduction to my testimony time, I went over the Identity Crisis page, and then shared a big identity crisis of my own:
In 2019, my husband and I started realizing that God might be calling us back to the USA. We were not sure how or when, but then 2020 happened, and it seemed like a million pieces of my identity came to a sudden crash:
A global pandemic: what is our world identity crisis
Cultural identity crisis—leaving Brazilian culture/language and entering American culture
Known/unknown identity crisis: I had a safe bubble for my girls in Brazil and we were returning to the 2020 race riots and Trump/Biden election as a mixed family
Mental health crisis: Caid had a breakdown May 2020, being a partner to someone struggling is it’s own thing
Social Class identity crisis: we were a family of 4 living on $20,000 a year and didn’t have the funds to move (super stress!) but God provided a job
Career identity crisis: leaving a life I loved and desperately wanted to keep. It is extra complicated when your identity is wrapped up in what you do spiritually. It is really hard to work in ministry without it become part of your identity. Untangling your value from what you do is hard—especially when what you do is for Jesus.
Values, beliefs, and goals: everything was shaken-I felt like everything was taken away from me.
I was left with two huge questions:
If I wasn’t in Brazil: WHO WAS I?
If I wasn’t a Missionary: WHO WAS I?
Here are the four things I went through that I feel are healthy and important, and would like to share with you:
Reflect
The hidden gift in the pandemic was that it created a safe space to think that I would not have had otherwise. My normal life was way too busy-but when everything stopped, I had time to cry, yell, complain, journal (I have a whole journal just about the transition from Brazil and arrival to America). Finding time to do this in your own identity crisis can be hard and complicated: but it is worth it. Pushing it down and away is not healthy. Create space!
Remember
I would have drowned in this time if it wasn’t for Christ and the conscious beautiful goal and desire to have Him as my center. I had a wise counselor at this time, who assigned me things like figuring out my theology of ministry—why I do what I do-that kind of thing. Remembering that I had built my life on the rock and had so many beautiful things in my life (even if they felt like so many were all being taken away). It was an important time to consciously RECENTER CHRIST. It was kind of like when I helped my girls clean their jewelry box: there was a BALL of necklaces all tangled together. Once I got the center-Christ-back in place and focused, it was easier to get to the stuff that mattered—and to detangle from the lies. Unfortunately, over the years I’ve seen people go through identity crisis and decided they needed to throw out everything—Christ included—and then start over. This has often led to disastrous affects. The two major lies I identified during this time that I had to (and am still kind of) deal with were:
God loves me more (or I am closer to God when I am) in ministry/as a missionary
If I leave, I am abandoning those I’ve been serving, and negated every good thing that’s been accomplished while I’ve served here
If you asked me before this time if I believed these lies, I would have said OF COURSE NOT! But when my ministry/missionary-ness was taken away—that is when I realized that I really had let these lies creep into my life in different ways.
Re-figure
For me, this was a death of a dream. There was a lot of LAMENT involved in all of this identity crisis. And it was really important that I learn this amazing biblical gift—what it is, and how to do it (see the second to last page to see the graphic that I put together, during this time, about what I learned about lament). For regrouping, I was leaving my whole team in Brazil, but I was returning to my family: and I am so grateful to them, and grateful to Cassie from church who was a lifeline—I met with her every week for quite a while after returning. Journaling was amazing. I was determined to leave well, and to arrive well. Leaving well was hard because I had to consciously make it NOT ABOUT ME at all: I needed to focus on others, which was good but hard. A gratitude list is always important, but there is something extra about it that is needed during an identity crisis.
Rebuild
Lastly, you can’t put a time limit on this. For big identity crisis, you might find that there are some yearly cycles where things come up again for you at certain times. You will fail. Get up and recalibrate and go at it again. Honestly, I am surprised at how much more settled I feel in this specific identity crisis—even since September when I first shared about it. There really is something about talking about it that helps heal things! But in September, I felt the whole “I feel like I am still a missionary, but people don’t get it and I don’t get it” more, whereas around the beginning of this year I felt a shift to “I am a missionary at heart forever no matter where I am, and this is how I want to implement that in my family and home: and I want to be able to show others who are missionaries at heart how to do it for their families and homes as well!” It isn’t done, but it has turned a corner.
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I explained the next page, and we had 15 minutes of quite reflection as the ladies filled it out, and then 45 minutes of small group discussion, sharing our different identity crisis’, what God had taught us, and prayer together.
NOTE: In setting this up, I made sure to share that there might be identity crisis’ we are not ready to share about yet- and that is okay. Some are so deep that we need counseling and therapy: and this was not the place with the support to do that, but to share something where we had a bit of closure/lessons learned to share about (45 minutes at a church function with non-professionals is not the time to open deep trauma).
