‘I Am that I Am’

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At BeliefNet, Therese Borchard discusses labels, which is an identity issue. My cup of tea.

“Like a diagnosis, a label is an attempt to assert control and manage uncertainty,” writes Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D, one of the first pioneers in the mind, body, health field. “It may allow us the security and comfort of a mental closure and encourage us not to think about things again. But life never comes to a closure, life is process, even mystery. Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown.”

I disagree. My labels have freed me to live in better harmony with the person I wish to be.

Do you know what is even better than being what she calls “the person I wish to be?” What is even better is being the person that God has called us to be.

God said, “I Am that I Am.” He is always. He is ever. He is eternal. He is as He is, and it ever shall be. Not so with us. We are transformed with Him, through Him, and in Him. We “are” the people He has called us to be, and if we try to be anything else, we will only be miserable.

My identity, then, is not in my disorder, which is something that is not going to be in me when I get to heaven. My identity is in the person that God created me to be. He has made us all to be saints, and He will walk with us on this journey as we carry our crosses united with His Cross. If we find our identity in our disorders, we are forgetting, for that brief time that we are focusing on our disorder, that we are not “that” at all. In fact, we are supposed to be what God has called us to be, a saint free of all disorder.

We cannot be cured from this disorder, but it is our “thorn in the flesh” which helps us to become what God has created us to be. In this cross, we learn humility, obedience, trust, and more besides. Those are the fruits of our suffering, and those are the things we should hold onto as we become the person God created us to be.

God said, “I Am that I Am” and we rest in that. We are not yet what we are called to be, but in holding close to Him, we will eventually become the saints we are called to be. When we do, there is then only joy in our sufferings because we know that in them, we are close to Him.

Hat-tip, Stuart on Twitter