No whisper can accuse
No rumour can undo
The words You speak over me
No lie can ever break
No shame can ever steal
The words You speak over me
You’re speaking over me!

Only Your words, define me
You tell me who I am
Only Your love, can hold me
You make me who I am
You define me
You define me

The author of my days
You’re writing every page
With blood and scars
You heal my heart
Oh, You heal my heart!

Kim Walker-Smith/You define me

This song has been in my Spotify playlist for the last few months. I heard it and immediately it connected with my soul. It talks about our identity being in who God says we are and not in our own accomplishments or our own shortcomings or even what others say about who we are. For a long time I struggled with not working outside of the house and being a stay-at-home mum. I studied hard to get my degrees, I studied for 8 years and so I thought I would do something with me academic degrees. I tried but failed to get a job in the academic world. After I had my first baby, I just couldn’t find the way back in…and so I’ve had several smaller jobs but I mostly stayed at home. This was hard for me. The transition into motherhood wasn’t easy (super hard going from being a woman to a mum…nobody prepares you for this stuff!) and on top of that I got depressed partly due to a lack of social contact, no support network, lack of sleep and the loss of my job. Of course I did use my education in a way: by raising my children to the best of my ability I am using some of the knowledge I acquired during my studies. Having studied the Attachment Theory in debt was crucial in guiding me in my parenting decisions. This theory stresses the importance of a safe relationship for children to be nurtured in, one that is full of sensitivity to their needs (not my own) and a relationship which allows me to be present so I can respond promptly to their emotional and physical needs, something I cannot do if I’m not there.

“Things are temporary, relationships last forever. Nothing can replace the time we spend investing in the life of another.”

Roy Lessin

Before you think I’m advocating attachment parenting here or saying that all women should be home, that’s not what I think at all. I’m not against women working. In fact I wrote my Master’s thesis on the topic of motherhood and the perception that women have of motherhood, studying the differences between women in France (working often full-time) and the Netherlands (where women often work part-time). But I chose not to go for a full-time position after my first daughter was born but to work part-time where possible or not to work at all. Paid work that is of course, because there’s plenty of work to do at home. If I want I can work around the clock, a mothers’ job is never done. But even though this was a personal choice and one that I still believe was the right one for me, it did mean I could not pursue an Academic ‘career’ and this started to seriously affect my self-esteem. I think I had started to replace my true identity as a child of God with an identity based on my intelligence and my degrees. Feeling like I had accomplished something. Ha! Well, I did, I’m not diminishing what I did but in the years that I wasn’t working (I now work part-time) God started to pull away the layers. Like in Shrek, when he talks about being an onion…many layers of false identities had attached itself to my true self.

So, in my free time between nappy changes, I started to study the writings of Paul and read many books. Paul has some interesting things to say about the things he had to leave behind for the sake of Christ. For the sake of truly belonging. For the sake of finding himself. His true self. He says he considers all a loss compared to knowing Christ. His education, his upbringing he considers it all to be nothing compared to knowing Jesus… wauh!

The apostle Paul was an educated man, a very intelligent and interesting man and yet his identity was in Jesus alone, in who Jesus said he was and not in anything else. This was challenging me. Did I really believe that I was hidden in Christ, that I didn’t have to show off my education to count? Or to boast of who I am waving my papers in people’s faces to proof that I do count, even though I am not working and therefore not part of society, as some tend to claim…

On a tangent…I didn’t always feel positive about what Paul had to say in the bible…I greatly hated what I thought he’d written about women in the bible…turns out to be a little different to what it seemed after reading the works of theologian N.T. Wright, Lucy Peppiatt, Sarah Bessey, Rachel Held Evans, Kris Vallotton and Danny Silk amongst others (an excellent blog on this topic of women in the bible etc is this blog: https://margmowczko.com/margs-articles/ )

Back to my story here…I’ve learned that knowing Jesus and spending time with God and my children is worth more than any career, job or hobby (I do still like working and my hobbies). But what’s even more is that whether I work or whether I don’t have an academic career as such, my value is not tied up in this. I am who God says I am: his daughter. And it is enough. Learning to trust Him. That He knows what He’s doing with me, whether seen or unseen. Known or unknown. And so, as I let God define me, in the secret place…I discover who I am. His. Beloved.

“The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.”

C.S. Lewis