I Am Who I Am

This week I continue on from last week where I looked at my emerging awareness of the necessity of finding and living out of my True Identity in Christ. I said that I am discovering that I am not who I thought I was. In the first half of my life I had taken on a ‘social identity' and believed that was who I was. However, the process of transformation I am undergoing is revealing that this social identity I had embraced was actually an illusion. It was a false perception of reality. This social identity was a False Self that I had become trapped in- a type of prison. It needed something extraneous and drastic to impact on me in order to both set me free and open my eyes to perceive a new reality. The ‘Jonah experience’ that I went through was very difficult and painful, but necessary; because without it I would not have been able to see and experience what I do know. It has set me on a new path of discovering and living out of the reality of my True Self in Christ.

In the past eighteen months I have been intensely reflecting on my life journey; and especially my spiritual journey which has been an integral part of it. One of my spiritual mentors was fond of saying that an unreflected life is not worth living; and I sincerely agree. Looking back has given me insight and perspective on what has happened through the course of this journey; which at any one time I was blind to see, because I was so caught up in the events.

This has taken me back to a time some twenty five years ago when I decided to take my relationship with and commitment to God to another level. At that stage I had been involved in an Ignatian lay Christian contemplative community for about four years. This was called Christian Life Communities (CLC).The director of CLC asked me to consider working full-time as a field worker, travelling around the Eastern Cape to encourage and facilitate the spiritual formation of the members of the groups that had been established there. I felt that the Lord was calling me to respond positively to this; and so I did. When I began this work I asked the director what my job description was. His reply was: “Be yourself!” That was it; my primary job description. My initial response was that this was great; there was no pressure to perform within a particular mould.

It did not take me long to realize two things however. The first was that I did not fully understand what the director meant by saying that I must ‘be myself’. It was something of a mystery to me what that actually meant in practice. The second thing followed on from this: I did not know who I was. After nine months of wrestling with this I came to see that I was in fact a spiritual clone of the director; who had been my mentor and role model. I had unconsciously taken on his spiritual identity as my own. I did not know who "I” really was. I could therefore not fulfil my mandate of being myself. There was a lack of awareness of my own spiritual identity; and therefore I did not possess secure inner consciousness of my own spiritual authority. I might have known it on an intellectual head level; having a theological understanding of being ‘in Christ’, and the priesthood of all believers. Yet I did not have it at a heart level, within the depths of my being. Something was missing; there was a void within my soul. I could therefore not, with any integrity, continue working as a field worker. I duly resigned.

This led to me finding myself in a spiritual desert of sorts. I began a long period of what can only be called my own ‘dark night of the soul’. This lasted around twenty years. I continued to attend church and never lost my faith in God, but I dropped out of any leadership or serious role in the church. The previous deep intimacy that I had known with God vanished like mist does when the baking sun rises far above the horizon. I found myself in a parched land without water, desperately wanting my thirst to be quenched. I had to wait a long, long, long time for it to happen; but it finally did.

During those dark, arid years my life went on. I initially worked as a joiner/ cabinet-maker; and then started my own joinery business, doing wood work. I found it interesting, engaging and satisfying. Running a business was challenging and stretched me in different ways. It led to personal growth and development on many fronts.

Whilst this was taking place I also began a family. I married Sharon (and her son Euan.) After the three of us got to know each other we had another son, Kyle, a couple of years later. The focus of my attention switched towards my wife and two sons. Between raising my family and running my business my hands were well and truly full. Through these two anchors in my life I began to develop a sense of my identity. This identity was ultimately rooted in the concrete realities of my family and my business.

My business was doing reasonably well, and apart from the usual struggles common to all families, so was my family. I settled into a comfortable state of complacency; secure in what I had, and what I had achieved. This led to a newfound, secure, sense of identity. To me, all was well. The problem was that my Loving Heavenly Father had other ideas. I now recognize with hindsight that to him all was not well. When he looked at me he saw that I was trapped in a False Identity; which was rooted in a false reality. Despite being oblivious to it, I was living a half-life and not the “fullness of life” that Jesus died on the Cross to secure for me. I was selling myself short by living with the illusion that what I had was the full package. I was in fact running away from reality in the same way that Jonah had run away from it so long ago. My True Father was doing me a massive favour when he sent the great fish to swallow me in the guise of a heart attack.

When I ended up out of control and flat on my back in ICU what I experienced was neither pain nor panic. Instead, I found myself once more being embraced by the True Father I had run away from for all those years I spent hiding in the desert. I experienced deep inner peace and contentment. The light of his presence chased away my inner darkness; and my desperate thirst was finally satisfied. Not only that, I began to realize at a heart level who I really am. I am the son of my True Father, who loved me into being.  I know that my True Identity is rooted and grounded in my relationship with my Heavenly Father; and nothing else. Everything else is illusion and unreality.

Questions for reflection:

·         Do you know who you really are?

·         Are you secure in your identity?

·         What is your identity rooted in?