The beginnings of a discussion on identity

Did someone ever accuse you of not being yourself when you knew that you were? Did you ever have someone else tell you that you were acting out of character and you knew that they were right? Yeah, because we know in our bones the things that are true about us and the things that are not true. The first person may have been gauging who they think you are off the false you that they have always known, the side of you that developed as a result of painful experiences and is maybe on the more reactionary side.

There was a person in my life who used to call me “bobcat” because of how I could get so fierce and mean. I loathed being called this because part of me knew that it was not really me but a way of being that I developed to protect myself. It wasn’t until years later that I was attending a conference and someone prophesied over me and called me a “lioness” that this thing finally began to break away from me. I had actually begun to believe that I was just a mean person, and I very much could be. It was like I had no control over myself and that was who I was at my core. Being called a “lioness” by this other person, who had no idea of my ever being called a “bobcat,” completely broke me open that day and I wept freely in a room full of people that I had just met.

You see, a bobcat is a loner who attacks when provoked and are fierce territorial predators, not something I aspire to be. A lioness on the other hand is strong and fierce but also compassionate. Lionesses are communal creatures who work together to raise their cubs. They look out for the greater good of the pride and maintain solidarity among their pride. That is my heart, that is the real Brandi even if it had not always shown. When the man spoke that over me, it felt like permission to come into who I really am by casting a vision for how I was made to be.

Being compassionate and learning to flow with community are not things that have come easily for me even if they were my true nature and hearts pure desire. They require vulnerability and vulnerability is an opening of oneself to others for the sake of flowing with mankind, and when you are open you can get hurt.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
-Anais Nin

It is all a risk, either way, it is a risk. To remain tight in my bud might feel safe and warm and cozy in some regards, but it does not allow me to experience the fullness of relationship in greater context. Staying tight in my bud may have seemed like a great way to protect myself and had served its purpose when encircled by harshness. Unfortunately, to the extent that I protect myself, I also push the possibility of healthy relationship away. This is a detriment to myself and to society because it is in relationships and community that we can come to know ourselves at a deeper level and offer our gifts.

A few years ago a friend introduced me to an ancient symbol called the flower of life. It is simply an infinite interconnected web of circles. If each of us and our lives represent one circle, full circle, and each circle overlaps several other circles, therefore connecting us all and creating a whole, then we can be a beautiful network of interconnection, the body of Christ. The interconnections serve to support each of us and make us one. The areas of overlap create synergy and synergy is powerful. If circles are broken, the web is broken. If circles refuse to overlap because they cannot open up to others, the web is also broken. This is the case in this broken world among all of us broken people who have learned that it is safer to stay tight in a bud.

So when the man at the conference called me a lioness, it was like he invited me into wholeness. He spoke truth to my heart and gave me a kind of permission to be who God made me to be. I am still moving towards this position of wholeness in being who I am but envisioning it is a first step. It’s the “aha, yes, this is who I am. Thank you for telling me.”

This takes me to another area and that’s to do with gangs and other communal groups from throughout history. Why do you think people join such organizations? I believe it comes from our deep longing to belong somewhere. When people are abused in any of the multitudes of ways we can be abused, we cannot give ourselves to our families or our communities. We learn to do whatever it takes to survive, therefore losing our truest self. Some people are completely abandoned by their family and have no place to lay their head. People like this are extremely susceptible to joining gangs because a gang offers a place to belong, people to call your own, people to call you their own. These groups offer a sense of community that our hearts long for but they are not infinitely connected to the whole. The circles in these types of organizations join together and overlap but separate from everyone else, creating islands of angry, hurting, lonely people trying to get their needs met and destroying any chance at the real community that God intended us for.

While these groups offer a sense of community and even some sense of safety for those living in dangerous places in the world, they also choke out true identity by pushing crooked agendas and values and convincing people to participate in things that they really don’t want to. On the same token, I’ve seen churches do similar things, squelching out individuality in the name of God, pushing cultural values above Biblical values and cultivating agendas of performance rather than the love of Christ. There are always two ditches, for the road is narrow.

Let’s go back to blooming. I think the most beautiful gardens are the ones with great diversity and we can clearly see that is God’s heart if ever we spend time in nature or look into the varying beautiful faces of people all around us. If the circles on the flower of life push in too tight, like they do in either of the ditches I mentioned, then people cannot thrive, they are choked out. If they refuse to overlap then they become islands and are not useful to the whole, but if they can fully open, overlapping in several places with the core remaining their sacred Christ in me center, then the whole of each individual will have great depth. The center holds and Christ in me is the hope of glory and “The glory of God is man fully alive.” (Irenaeus)

While we need Christ to be the center to fill us with the fullness of Himself, we also need places to be ourselves, people with whom to be ourselves with. Something I notice the longer and deeper I go into community, making countless friends and acquaintances, is that different people and people groups bring out different parts of my multifaceted self. I don’t naturally connect with all people, but I can still be open to all people because it’s who I choose to be. I choose to be the lioness, fiercely cultivating community wherever I go. I choose to love other people even when it’s hard. I choose to be curious about who God made me to be and to embrace all of the things I know to be true about me and to reject anything that I know is not true.  Of course the choosing is just the first step, then there is the seeking and reckoning and wrestling to become who you know you were made to become. I will just end with this Tupac quote. (I’m not recommending any of his music but he had a hard life and this quote is just good.)

“we wouldn’t ask why a rose that grew from the concrete for having damaged petals, in turn, we would all celebrate its tenacity, we would all love its will to reach the sun, well, we are the roses, this is the concrete and these are my damaged petals, don’t ask me why, thank god, and ask me how” ― Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew from Concrete