This is part two of a series of journal entries that I’ve written throughout my Race and have decided to make public. My hope is that letting my friends and family in on some of the rawer things I’ve gone through this year will give them a bigger glimpse of what the last 11 months of my life have looked like–because truly, this is a difficult year to explain! I hope these will help.
October 31, 2014
Hey God,
I’m in a plane heading to Atlanta, but by tomorrow I’ll be in the Philippines on the continent of Asia. Thank you for the heart friends on this squad who I can go to and be me. Help me grow in these relationships this year because they’re precious and I don’t want to miss them.
Thank you that I got to the Managua airport yesterday. Thank you that even though security searched my bags and confiscated my DEET mosquito spray, my squad cheered for me when I finally got on the plane and took my seat.
Last night we slept on the floor of that Managua airport, but before I fell asleep I caught myself just sitting still against a wall, alone in the middle of a room filled with 50 people. I thought about the room and my role in the room. And I began asking questions.
They were weird thoughts to just suddenly occur, but I found myself thinking, “Who am I? am I “me” here? with these people? am I acting like myself right now?
But wait, who is ‘myself?’
Is ‘myself’ who I was back at home? when I was with my family? when I was away at school with my friends? Who is ‘myself’?
Wait, who am I?”
Suddenly, it hit me hard: I think I’m having an identity crisis.
I started to realize, the World Race forces you to lose yourself entirely—your identity—because everything I’ve ever identified with I can’t take with me in my pack for these 11 months. There’s literally not room.
I can’t take my family. I can’t take my best friends, or the girls I discipled who look up to me. I can’t take my college degree, or the cute dresses I like to wear. I can’t take the church I go to. And I can’t take the people I’ve grown up with.
Guess who I take with me?
Jesus.
This year I’m not known as a student. I’m not known as my parents’ daughter, Brandon’s sister, or someone’s best friend. When that hungry little boy Oscar ran up to me in that Nicaraguan village last week and wrapped his arms around my leg, he didn’t see a graduate of Centerville High School, an alumna of Elon University, an employee, an intern, or a scholarship winner.
Jesus prompted my heart: “Who are you Katy? Who are you when it’s just Me and you in the room?”
I know in my head certain fixed things about my identity. I am a follower of God. I am His Disciple. I am His Daughter. I am His Princess
Is that enough for me? Will I let it be?
If I have no other identity, but that I have in Christ, who am I in Christ, and what does that woman look like when all the other layers are stripped away?
This is all hitting me in the Managua airport last night, and it made me stop dead in my tracks.
The only thing that matters this year about who I am is who I am in Jesus.
Who is that woman, Lord?
I’ve got to surrender all of my former identities. It’s gotta be me, plus Jesus, plus nothing. That is the desire of my heart.
If I can learn this year what that all means, truly, for my identity, I feel like I will finish the Race more “me” than when I began it.
More of my truest self. My eternal self. My glory self.
Who God saw when He designed me. Who I will be one day in heaven when it’s just me and my Lord.
How sweet, and lovely, and beautiful—a woman alone next to Christ—You are making me.
Make away,
katy
Katy, beautiful post! I feel like our past 11 months looked almost opposite, me doing the same things every single day with my kids, no new places, or new people to meet and adventure with, but I have had many of these same moments, of “who am I?” It is easy to get lost in different seasons, loosing a grip of the things we hold on to as identities, which can happen in a unique year of ministry or ordinary days of motherhood. Sometimes it’s hard to find and live in who we are if it is just Jesus and us.
Precious Katy. We are not to “envy our neighbor” of anything yet I admit, at this moment in my life, you are helping me to be honest when I publicly pronounce, “I envy you.”
As a child, I believed fully, without a doubt in my heart, that Jesus loved me & He was always with me – and He would help me -someday in my life- to help others in this world.
“Here I am Lord, I am yours Lord…”
Sweet Katy, you remind me of me when I was young. Yet I strayed and found myself on a path that kept me from being His disciple & witness as you are today. So, I am as I am, with God’s help & mercy & blessing, reaching out to others in ways our Lord puts before me. Perhaps not what I may have been if I had taken a different road years ago. But with hope, trust, and faith, I clung to my God’s guidance… That I might touch lives for Him and share His love & mercy.
Thank you sweet Katy for I am a life that you saved.
just you…without anything else is the definition of beautiful. God’s grace, mercy, joy, and true true radiance pours out of you my sweet friend.
miss you
Katy. Thank you for writing this.