I Am...Beyond Labels

I'm in D.C. this week teaching 1000 middle schoolers about who God says they are:

What God says about you is the most important and truest thing about you.

Honestly, I still regularly struggle with this truth. A lot of times I define myself by what I do or what others say about me, not what God says about me. I am a wife. I am a daughter. I am a friend. I am a pastor. I am a mama-in-waiting. I am a girly girl. But those are really roles I play or things I do - it's not who I am.

For many months after my infertility diagnosis, I struggled to let diagnosis that define me:

I am the infertile one. I am a woman with PCOS. I am unable to get pregnant. I am broken at the core of my womanhood. I am less than other women.

Identifying those false messages was a huge part of my grieving process. Become aware of those lies ultimately led to the acceptance of my diagnosis, but not accepting those words as my identity.

Yes, I have PCOS. No, I am not the infertile one. I am loved beyond measure by God of the Universe. I am a new life. I am worth far more than my ability to conceive a child. I am being restored day by day to be more of who I was created to be. I am chosen by God for a divine purpose to change the world. I am created very good. I am an inheritor of everything that is Christ's. That's the truth about me.

And it's the truth about you. I pray that you & I would see ourselves beyond the labels that we place on ourselves or that others place on us. I pray those labels - true or false - would not become our identity, but they would be used redemptively by God. I pray that God's voice we would be clearer and stronger than any other voice. I pray God's labels would be the strongest of all.

And I pray that these middle schoolers at DCLA would "get this" early on in their lives...what different lives they could live!