From Insecure to Anchored: How Your God-Given Identity Grounds You

My husband and I lived in Nashville for four years before we had kids. In fact, most of that time we were struggling with infertility. We saw the doctors, prayed the prayers, and waited. During that time, I felt like God wanted me to study Psalm 139. It is a passage I had always loved for its poetry. But in this season, I committed it to memory. I read it every morning on the little cement patio I had talked my husband into pouring for us.

I assumed I was reading this chapter for its references to God forming us before the foundations of the world. I thought it was a seed of a promise that He had formed some little person for us to raise, written to bring me hope. I dwelt on that.

But as I read and memorized each line over hot summer weeks, I found that He was speaking into my soul about me. He spoke into the part of me that felt forgotten, unseen, unloved even.

Because if He saw, and if He cared, then there would be a baby. Right?

I didn’t doubt He was capable. I doubted He was willing.

Psalm 139 speaks to an intense level of intimacy that God has with us. Closer than anyone else. Following into every moment, even our thoughts. It says we are chosen. Carefully planned. Carefully looked after. Even the hairs on my head couldn’t be hidden from this level of scrutiny.

It was in this time that my trust roots grew deep.

He was showing me I wasn’t just a created thing. I wasn’t just a worshipping servant. I was beloved.

Being beloved means I am fully loved the way I am, where I am, without conditions.

Being beloved means I am cared for as a mother cares for her infant.

Being beloved means it’s safe for me to grieve, to be imperfect, to be vulnerable because it doesn’t affect how He sees me.

The constancy of his affection makes me steady in life, even when my circumstances feel completely unfair and pain-stricken. I don’t have to flounder or fear or fall apart.

Being beloved means my worth comes from His value of me and not from inside of me. If I count my own talents, skills, or successes as the reason for my goodness, I commit the sin of pride. I am weak because my identity is based on something unstable and fluid.

If I consider myself unworthy and unlovable because of my failings, I commit the sin of a lack of faith. I am not believing that what He says about himself and about me is true.

Instead of vacillating between these two poles of pride and shame, I see myself as flawed through and through, accept the ugliness that’s there while also embracing a redemption that is perfect and a love that knows no limits.

In this I am set free.

Even in the middle of my mistakes, in the middle of my pain, I can feel whole and joyful. It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with this all-seeing, all-knowing God.

Reading Psalm 139 didn’t rid me of grief or questions. But it led me into a place of resting in the certain care of my Father in the middle of the grief and questions. It allowed me to feel safe even as the uncertainty remained and the outcomes were unresolved.

It is not in centering myself or prioritizing myself that I was able to become steady emotionally through all of the ups and downs. It is centering God and being pliable enough to adapt to the ways He leads me.

A few prompts for reflection.

Considering Psalm 139, do I fully trust Creator God to handle the details of my life today?

Can I embrace his unconditional acceptance of me despite my flaws?

Can I allow that acceptance to fuel my vulnerability before Him and pursuit to become more like Him in every area?

Related: Scriptures About Your Identity in God

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