Lost Identity

"If you try to find intimacy with another person before achieving a sense of identity on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to compete yourself."

A course at Seattle Pacific U taught by Dr Les & Leslie Parrott is always started with that statement.

Take a moment and think about that. Think about moments you've tried to be complete in someone else. When someone else is in need of you, your services, desires you...you then feel complete, right?

As humans we constantly are searching and trying to find fulfillment in something, someone or somewhere other than ourselves...or rather, Christ inside of us.

I have a friend who has had a rough past year. Over the last year they have gone from a serious relationship - 5 years together + engagement - to calling off the wedding two months out, breaking off the relationship completely, trying not to face the heartbreak, dating 3 or 4 people at a time to now dating someone they never would have considered dating and have now begun to consider getting engaged to this new person. What does that look like to you? Someone who is searching, looking for something to fill a void in their life.

I truly think when a seriously relationship is ended, you need time to find out who you are again, time to regain a sense of stability in yourself and who you are in Christ. Granted, this shouldn't be lost in a relationship, but you have begun to walk in sync with the person you are dating. Now you must be just you once again (which is a good thign). There is this time and need not to be in a relationship. Otherwise you are going to begin to jump from relationship to relationship, one person to the next... Rebound. Cough, cough. Its amazing how real that silly little term is. We've all heard it whispered, discussed, laughed about or even cried about - rebound. But just how real it is, is heartbreaking.

When you've lost (or even never had gained) the identity of YOU and put any identity you own into a relationship - you can't be complete enough to handle a healthy relationship. You can't be real enough for someone to love you, fully love YOU. Then you've begun to try to complete yourself in that person's love for you, need for you, caring for you... Women begin to clean house and nest, men begin to make more money, be more macho. Its human nature to want the feeling of being needed.

Now there's a healthy balance to being needed; a healthy equal between being needed and being stable in who you are.

Think about that statement one more time - how are you finding stability in Christ and who Christ has made you....JUST you.

"If you try to find intimacy with another person before achieving a sense of identity on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to compete yourself."