Value-Purpose-Identity
Last week, my phone prompted me to clean out my gallery due to low storage. My gallery had over 15,000 images and videos combined. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m a photo hoarder. The saying, pictures tell a thousand words, rings true for me.
Aged photos specifically mean the world to me, so deleting them is often a painful experience I try to avoid. They remind me of where I’m coming from and motivate me to keep pushing toward the end goal. They keep me humble and remind me of the times and people who nurtured me. Every time I look at an image from times past, I enjoy a boast of serotonin the nostalgia releases.
Of those 15k photos, 1100 were screenshots. Since they invented screenshots, I’ve had this unhealthy habit of screenshotting things with the intent to use the shot as a reference for some future task, but never do.
So the number of recipes I will try, the outfits and shoes I will buy, the restaurants I’ll visit, the hair color I’ll wear next, and all the other things I said I would but never do continue growing and jamming up my device's storage.
While deleting screenshots, I found a thread from a Facebook post nearly a decade ago. The post asked, “What was I known for in high school? #wolmerschallenge.” After reading the screenshots, I gathered that I must have saved this post in particular because of the responses in the comments.
The comments listed the more obvious answers like “Netball, Cheerleading, and Dancing,” but a few mentioned “leadership.” One comment, in particular, said, “A strong dynamic leader…believe it or not, I looked up to u.” Comments like these are inspiring but also put me in the frame of mind to consider how others perceive me, how much their viewpoint connects to my true identity, and, if so, whether I am making an impact and living on purpose.
I’m an overthinker, so almost any scenario compels me to think profoundly and assess. I think very often about my identity and the purpose attached to it. In 2023, all this thinking and assessment resulted in an existential crisis characterized by negative feelings.
Since then, I’ve learned to surrender my overthinking, larger-than-life questions, and concerns about my identity, purpose, and everything else to the omniscient One.
During my quarter-life crisis, I inquired of God and sought answers to many complex questions. Finding these old screenshots of my high school peers' perception of me brought back to mind the main question I explored during that experience: Who Am I?
For several reasons, answering who I am has always been challenging. During my Q&A with God that season, he revealed three things that have changed my perspective and response to the big questions, like, “Who Am I?” I hope you find some value in them.
Epiphany 1:
I realized the first challenge in responding is that I know who I am in my mind and heart, but there’s a disconnect between my mind and mouth that won’t allow me to fully express or articulate through my lips what my heart and mind have already conceived. That disconnect is people-pleasing. Always wondering what people will say or think.
We have been taught a sense of false humility, which actually doesn’t work in our favor. Instead, it adds to our feelings of inadequacy. I’ve learned that saying something good and positive about myself doesn’t equate to arrogance or boastfulness.
Instead, it speaks to the true identity and purpose that God ascribed to me when He created me. When He created me (us), He said it was good and that He created us for His good works. So, if God uses positive language to describe and define us, then who are we not to follow suit?
We grew up hearing, “Self-praise is no recommendation.” Still, I’ve grown to know that waiting for others to sing our praises, recognize the gift that we are, or tell us who we truly are is even more detrimental to our character than us defining ourselves.
So, I am committed to learning to boldly declare and decree from my lips all the excellent, positive, and GOOD things that make me who I am. We must move past worrying about being labeled as arrogant, self-absorbed, or pretentious and think more about the benefits of positive self-talk and identifying - the benefits of walking, living, and talking like an image bearer of the Most High. I’ve long decided not to shrink in action to please the masses, but I’m just adding speech to my no-shrink list. I’m good and Imma show you and tell you.
Epiphany 2:
It’s always been pretty complicated to communicate who I am without using labels or aligning my identity with what I do. I am afraid this is shared guilt since society has tricked us into believing we are what we get paid to do for decades.
Typically, when we meet someone for the first time or even catch up with someone we haven't seen for a while, one of the first questions asked is what do you do or what are you doing now? We have done the sad deed of deciding one’s value according to job titles (and other labels).
Even in an interview, experts advise against responding to the tell-me-about-yourself question with personality traits and instead reply with experience that aligns with the position you are interviewing for.
Due to this conditioning, I have been trained to respond to “Who are you?” and “Tell me about yourself” with an elevator pitch. It usually sounds something like this: My name is Wanda Bryce. I work in higher education, and I aim to leverage my education, network, and skills to meaningfully impact the student success rate of marginalized and vulnerable student groups.
By this token, we have become so robotic and homogenized in our responses and actions that not many of us know who we are without our professional titles or the labels society ascribes to us. The more unfortunate reality is that those of us who genuinely understand who we are without the bells and whistles have sadly bought in and are among the status quo.
Value should not be attached to what I do or, by extension, what I have accomplished. My job title and accolades are not who I am. They represent my skills, talents, and abilities and are evidence of how a gracious God has blessed and used me.
I love being Black, woman, feminine, Jamaican, and all the other labels, but they do not completely define who I am. They are plot devices in my story and traits to build my character arc. I am much more than the eyes meet, more than culture or society says I should be.
I am all of the above and more. I aim to walk in this truth from now on. My purpose and value are more significant than labels. I am…more than [that] and made for more than [that].
Epiphany 3:
In connection to epiphany number two, answering the question, Who Am I? It continues to be difficult because our society's context and expectations limit our potential responses. I believe that saying I am this or that, or these surface things ultimately limits the framework of who God created me to be.
Though we know in a sense who we are (our value, purpose, and true identity), our knowledge is incomplete. Our lives are so long and full that our experiences are not quantifiable and continue morphing. As they change, we, too, are on an unending wave of evolving with them.
For instance, I’ve always been the same Wanda, but every day, I am different. From 1993 to now, at my core, I've been 30 years consistently the same person, but I also cannot ignore that 30 years of evolution have taken place in my mind, heart, soul, and body.
My high school peer described me as a strong, dynamic leader. I can assure you that I am still very much that strong, dynamic leader, but I don’t lead the same way I did then. In high school, I was a charismatic leader.
Fifteen years ago, my default was to leverage my likeability and popularity to gain loyalty and support. Though still charismatic, I rely less on my charm and charisma to get buy-in. I lead with more strategy, employ more wisdom, and lean on experience.
There's a saying that goes, the multitudes are within me, or I contain the multitudes, which is to say that within us is a vastness that is so great beyond the scope of our human imagination.
As we ask, seek, and knock to find the truth about our value, purpose, and identity, I pray that we embrace being limitless. Not because we can do or be all things in our humanity but because we can through Christ’s divinity. I know I am incomplete, and I am okay with that because it’s not in terms of deficiency but of not being finished (having immense capacity to be and do).
For me, the multitude I contain is Christ. I have figured out that He is the plug. He answers the big questions, and only He can reveal who I am because my value, purpose, and identity are found in Him.
For we are His workmanship [His own master work, a work of art], created in Christ Jesus [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, ready to be used] for good works, which God prepared [for us] beforehand [taking paths which He set], so that we would walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us].
- Ephesians 2: 10, Amplified Bible.
Grace and peace, Friends.
