Accomplishment & Identity
Over and over and over again, we put on different roles like a layer of dragon skin. Skin other people force on us, skin we wished we had, skin that makes us look like something else. Skin we don like armor to protect the soft, smooth selves within us. We grow into them, or maybe they grow into us. It’s easy to forget these dragon skins haven’t been a part of us forever. But it always gets peeled off, usually painfully.
Relationships end, interests change, people leave. If you have good health today, you are not guaranteed good health tomorrow. When the scales begin to flake off, when we realize this identity we’ve built for ourselves may not be quite as permanent as we wanted, we’re left scrambling for another skin to grow into.
If the statements I use to evaluate my worth aren’t won’t be true in every circumstance, then they can’t be what actually gives me value. Our God-given identity can’t be something that is easily taken away. But if I’m not what I look like, not what I do, not who I know, not where I am, then what am I? What is actually under the layers that I’ve hidden myself in?
You aren’t what you accomplish. It’s good to find joy in your work, to take pride in providing, to be committed to doing whatever you do the best you can. But it’s easy to confuse a list of accomplishments with our inherent value.
Your worth is not in a relationship with your productivity. You are not the money you make or the titles you have. You are neither your failures nor your successes.
Instead, you are a beloved child whose sense of self does not depend on whether or not you’ve failed at something today, or will tomorrow. You have an identity that is not in jeopardy with every mistake, achievement, or crisis.
Jesus moves people from servants to sons. He doesn’t distribute salaries, exchanging fair payment for labor. He gives an inheritance.
Rather than view ourselves as beloved children of the Father, we treat ourselves more like corporations. We try to extract everything of value out of us, judge it against our competitors, and do whatever we can to keep producing something worthy of attention. Like a business, we treat our inherent worth like it has a number attached. And with our successes we see it grow, and with our missteps we see it decline. There is no room for mistakes, but there is also no room for rest or change. Because what is an artist who doesn’t create, or a family provider with no provisions?
When our value comes from outside ourselves, from a relationship that’s been given and can’t be taken away, nothing we do could ever make us less worthy of love. You aren’t your failures. And you aren’t your successes. If it doesn’t matter when you’re at the bottom of the leaderboard, then it doesn’t matter when you are at the top. Finding a sense of fulfillment in your work isn’t the same as hinging your identity on it. But what is it, exactly, that is so fulfilling? Maybe it’s collaboration in achieving a common goal, or participating in a movement you believe in, or completing something to the best of your abilities. But maybe it is also confirmation of the idea that you are worth loving if you can achieve.
This truth, that you are a beloved and cherished son or daughter of God, is not something that’s just there to make you feel better when things fall apart. In the moment of your biggest success, you cannot be made more valuable, more worthy of love, than you are in the lowest of lows. Because your identity is not in a relationship with what you do. Because you are already, in every moment, loved beyond comprehension.