“Becoming Who We Really Are”

So much of what we call “identity” is really just survival — a costume we learned to wear so the world would accept us. We become the polished version of ourselves because we’re afraid the real one might not be enough. But the soul never feels at home in a role. It only rests in truth.

There’s a lyric from Ethel Cain that hits deeper when viewed through this lens:

“Yeah, you’ve changed — but did I ever know you?”

It raises a sobering question: if change reveals us, did anyone ever know us before the mask began to slip — including ourselves?

Many people never meet their true self. They only meet their adapted self — the version shaped by expectation, performance, comparison, or pain. We confuse identity with:

• role,

• responsibility,

• reputation,

• or survival strategy.

But God doesn’t commune with the constructed self — He communes with the real one.

Scripture points us back to that unveiling:

“You were taught… to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
— Ephesians 4:22–24

The old self is the mask — the identity we performed.
The new self is actually the original self — the one God formed before fear rewrote our personality.

God is not asking us to invent something better — He is asking us to return to something truer.

When we finally stop performing, we don’t lose who we are…
we recover who we’ve always been.

Closing Prayer

Father, help me lay down the identity I built for survival,
and return to the identity You formed in truth.
Strip away performance, ego, and image,
until only the soul You created remains.
Let me live from wholeness, not appearance;
from authenticity, not illusion.
Amen.