Finding Your Identity or Self-Worth by Miriam Thor

In my new novella, A Kringle Family Christmas, the male lead, Jay, struggles with his self-worth. He grew up in foster care and never found his “forever home.” This leaves him feeling like the kid no one wanted, even as an adult. Joining the Navy gave him a place to belong, and he built his identity around his career. When God calls him to leave the Navy after eight years, he is terrified to obey because he feels like he would lose his home and the most valuable part of himself.

Have you ever tried to find your identity or self-worth in something temporary? I know I have. Growing up, I did it with good grades and being a good daughter. As an adult, it’s been my role as a wife and my job as a sign language interpreter. Sometimes, I’ve even built my self-worth on how much I’m doing to serve the Lord.

In A Kringle Family Christmas, Jay helps bring food to a local veterans’ home, where he talks with Chap, a retired military chaplain. When Jay tells him that he feels like a nobody without the Navy, Chap responds by reminding him that the first people to see Jesus after His birth were shepherds, who were in one of the lowest social classes in Israel. In the eyes of society, they were nobodies, but God chose to send his angels to them so that they could be the first to see the Messiah. He certainly saw them as valuable.

Chap also assures Jay that as a Christian, he is an adopted son of God and a coheir with Christ (Romans 8:15-17). Over the course of the story, Jay learns to find his identity and his worth in Christ, and that is where we need to find ours, too.

Most of the things I’ve made part of my identity over the course of my life have been good things, but trying to find worth in them is anxiety-inducing and unsatisfying. In recent years, the Lord has been teaching me to find my identity and my worth in Him. Not in the things I do for Him, but simply in the fact that I am His daughter, and He loves me. That’s it. That’s enough.

If you know Jesus, that’s true for you, too. You are a child of God, and He loves you. That makes you very valuable indeed. If you’re anything like me, though, it can be hard to truly internalize that. A passage that God led me to this year is Ephesians 3:17b-19.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (NIV)

I love that in this verse, Paul prays that the Ephesians will have power to grasp the love of Christ. This implies that it’s not something we can grasp on our own, but through His Spirit, we can be empowered to grasp Christ’s love. To internalize it. To live in it every day.

I’ve been praying this verse for myself almost every day this year, frequently inserting the names of my loved ones in place of “the Lord’s holy people.” Little by little, the Lord is helping me find my identity and my worth in Him and Him alone, the only thing that can never be taken away from me. I pray that He will do the same for you.

 

 

Bethany Kringle is planning to skip Christmas, just like she has both years since her mom died. Then, her brother unexpectedly tells her he’s taking leave from the Navy to come home for Christmas, and he’s bringing his friend Jay, with him. As Bethany scrambles to give the two of them the best Christmas possible, Jay tries to help her, even as he struggles with his own self-doubts and future plans. As Bethany and Jay work together, they can’t help being drawn to each other. Could God use this Christmas to bring them both peace and possibly bring them together as well?

 

 

Miriam Thor started writing in second grade and never stopped. Her first (unpublished) book was an illustrated children’s book about seals that is probably still on her mom’s shelf. Currently, Miriam lives in Alabama with her husband and six adorable cats and has a day job as a sign language interpreter. Her published works include Listening to the Rain, A Kringle Family Christmas, and Her First Noel. You can learn more about her at https://www.miriamthor.com/.