What defines you? 

Seems like a simple question, right? Normally when people are asked this question they begin to start listing all of the things in their lives that are important to them (i.e. being a mother or father, their job, their heritage, etc.). Generally those answers make sense. Those answers though are very generic. The reason why they’re generic is because you are first yourself  before you are any of those things. Your spirit, your soul who you are in all of your nakedness, the you that you are when you are alone, the parts of you that think inside your own head, the emotions you feel, the pains and joys you carry, the characteristics and unique traits that define your personality, and who you are when it’s just you and God. Before you can be any of those other things, you are first yourself and if those other things no longer existed, you would still be.

In life, we often times get too caught up in things or what our life has become so much so that we forget who we are and I know plenty of people (myself included at times in my own life) that when the “things” that define us are gone? We no longer know who we are. This doesn’t mean that when terrible things happen we aren’t allowed to be sad, depressed (for a period of time), or hurt. There are times though that when people forget who and what they truly are entirely that when something terrible happens, they never come back from the place of being hurt, sad, or depressed. Did you know that men at retirement age have one of the highest rate/risk of suicide? Have you ever met a person that was once wealthy or famous and became sick, disabled, injured, or aged out of their fame or money? Have you ever met a man or woman unable to recover after a divorce? Have you ever met a parent unable to move on with their life after loosing a child? I personally know many of all of these people and at one point in time was one of them myself.

Pain is inevitable, the duration of your suffering is optional. You absolutely have the power to chose the outcome of many situations in your life. You may not be able to predict or control all of the circumstances that you will encounter but your response to them is absolutely within your control. Do you react in faith or do you react in fear? Do you use hope to cope or do you allow a terrible thing to knock you off your mark for the rest of your life? The truth of the matter is one day we will all give account to God for ourselves. Being a mother, father, sister, brother, movie star, rapper, football player, lawyer, doctor, minister, teacher, etc all means nothing on the day you stand before the throne. On that day we will each give account for ourselves and we don’t get to bring other people with us. But with that individuality also comes the individual unconditional love God has for each and everyone of us. He loves all of his creations and He absolutely is willing and capable of healing any pain you feel or turning around any circumstance you face. Many times though, He is not used for the cornerstone of the definition of ourselves and He is used like an emergency substitute in a football game when the quarterback gets injured or He gets used as the last resort genie in a bottle after a tragedy and then gets blamed for everything not going the way that we think it should ideally go.

Your status is not your identity and neither is your struggle. If you allow those things to define who and what you are then when those things no longer exist, what is left of you? Do not let society fool you into believing that you need certain material things or social status to be happy or valuable. You are a valuable being not because QTP said so, but because God said so. Every life is a gift, even a difficult one. We are entitled to nothing. Everything we have is on borrowed time and is a gift. Each gift does not come with a required time table, meaning the gift can be for a moment or for a life time. Even if a gift is for a moment, be thankful for the moment no matter if it was a single moment or a million moments and do not let a struggle or loss of a gift then become the defining factor of your life. If you still have a life? You still have a reason to live it.

You may not want to hear this, but sometimes we have to lose everything to figure out when we thought we had everything, we really didn’t have anything, and then when we lost what we thought was everything is exactly where we found something that ended up being everything that we ever needed.

Be encouraged-

QTP