Confessions from a Leader

"These are my confessions..."

Before I digress into belting Usher at the top of my lungs allow me to confess something.

My friend and I were hanging out and she started asking the deep questions. You know the kind. The ones that sneak into your brain but you quickly avoid by succumbing to Netflix's pressure to play yet another episode. Throughout the course of our conversation she finally landed on a sentence that I clearly can't shake:

"Your identity is in your relationships."

WHAT! Umm no! My identity is in Christ. Well, sorta? I mean most of the time right? I got defensive as most people do rather than letting the truth do it's job and work on my heart. She followed up by asking what is my biggest fear to which I quickly responded "Being alone."

Point proven. You win. So now what?

Yes, my identity is in my relationships. Yes, I am a Young Life leader. In fact, I'm on Young Life staff. Everything started to click into place. It is no wonder that I have continuously wrestled with my identity being in Young Life. When things are going well I'm on Cloud Nine. I ride the roller coaster of club emotions like I'm the only person on the ride. When things plummet to the bottom I find myself in the deepest and darkest of despair. I have thrown my fair share of pity parties because things weren't going well. No one was texting back. Boo hoo and so on and so forth. Even writing it down is painful to admit.

So I decided to unhitch myself and try to get off the roller coaster. I got hobbies. I got friends. I even got a dog. Eventually it got a little better. I didn't cry when I sat in the car after club. Things felt a little more free and less dependent on the outcome. And yet after a year and a half of wrestling I still wasn't there yet. That is until finally it clicked with my friend's strong and truthful words. I was treating the symptoms and not the actual disease. The symptoms of my emotional connections, of my joys and pains, and thought it was all because of Young Life.

If my identity is in my relationships and I'm in a relational ministry it is no wonder I wrestle. I confess I take pride in how many friends I have, how many likes (both literally and figuratively) I receive. I enjoy keeping in touch. When it's all said and done I want people to look back and say "wow she was such a good friend." When my relationships aren't going well I take it as a personal hit because my relationships are what I'm all about. At times the very center of my being hinges upon how these relationships perform or feel, what a terrible prison cell I've built for myself.

But there is good news. Because I now know where my identity tends to lie, now I can invite Christ into that brokenness and ask for healing. I am a daughter of the Most High King. I have settled for a prison cell and surrounded myself with just enough relationships to be comfortable, yet Jesus has opened the door and calls me out. Price paid. Sentence served. GET OUT! I can ask Jesus for help and forgiveness, that in the midst of being about Him I got lost along the way. I started being about everyone else and about myself. I can now look to Christ instead of everything around me. I can put my hope in the One who never changes. The One who always texts back. The One who desires relationship more than I ever could. "On Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is sinking sand."

May that be our anthem. May we firmly and securely place our hope and being in Jesus and Jesus alone. Not even our relationship with Him, but just Him.

Just Jesus.