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There is something deeply moving to me about Alanis Morissette's song “Joining You.”She is speaking to a friend considering suicide, but rather than offering easy answers, she seems to gently ask her friend to reconsider something much deeper:
Are you sure all these things you believe about yourself are really you?
Alanis Morissette - ‘Joining You’
We spend our lives collecting identities.
What people think of us. What we've accomplished. Where we've failed. What happened to us. What we've done wrong. Whether we fit in. Whether we're successful. Whether we're loved. Whether we feel worthy.
Eventually, all those things can become a story we call “me.”
And when that story becomes painful enough, it can feel as though we are the problem.
But maybe we're not.
Maybe we are more than what has happened to us.
More than our mistakes.
More than our sadness.
More than our successes or failures.
More than the opinions of others.
More than even the thoughts passing through our own minds.
I love the tenderness of that idea.
Before you give up on yourself, consider that perhaps the self you've given up on isn't the whole of who you are.
Maybe what needs to disappear isn't you, but some of the things you've come to believe about you.
The labels can go.
The expectations can go.
The comparisons can go.
The old stories can go.
But you can stay.
Because underneath all of those layers is something deeper—something that existed before the world started telling you who you should be.
I believe that is where God meets us.
Not in the résumé of our lives. Not in our accomplishments. Not in our failures. Not even in the worst thing we've ever thought about ourselves.
He meets us beneath all of it.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone who has lost sight of their worth: not to tell them what they should feel, but to sit beside them long enough to remind them—
You are more than what you are feeling right now.
You are more than what happened to you.
You are more than what you think you are.
And there is still more of you to discover.
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” — Isaiah 43:1
