The Following is my most recent English paper. The topic was "Identity."

Stephanie Garver
Denice Turner
English 101, 040
October 28, 2004

Salt of the Earth

It was near the end of summer and the staff was down in the little town of Oakhurst, as they were every Saturday afternoon to play Frisbee, eat Pizza, and drink coffee. It was on one of these Saturday afternoons that two young men showed up with a video camera. They were, at random, choosing people from our staff to interview on video for a lesson at their church the following day. I happened to be one of those “chosen.” The tall young man asking the questions began with this: “who are you? Not who people see you as or how you act around people, but who are you on the inside? Who do you say that you are?”

Throughout my middle school and part of my high school life, I was known to conform and “become” my friends. I began to pick up actions, ways of speaking and different words and phrases depending on the group of friends I was with. People have told me that I have my Mom’s boldness and class and my Dad’s humor and ears. I’ve heard it said that I am the “American Girl” or the “Girl Next Door.” When I am around my friend, Sarah, I pick up her “accent.” When I’m around boys, I act tough. When I’m around girls I’m “girly.” In short, I was a conformist. I changed according to the world and circumstances around me. One could still even go as far as to compare me to a student, a daughter, a friend because in each one of these situations I would respond differently. My perspective is formed by a lot of thoughts that no one else has access to, each thought a long history that no one but I know; a collection of what other people think of me that nowhere near approaches the way I think about myself.

For a time I found my identity in my outer appearance. I would get up early (about four a.m.) to take a shower, curl my hair and put on make-up. I cared about how I looked and I wanted everything to match. In short, I simply wanted to fit in. In High school I was a “choir kid.” I was voted, “Best Smile” and “Most Artistic.” But none of those things were really who I was. People saw, and can only see the shells of those around them. They noted that I loved to sing, they saw me smile often, and they saw me in all the musicals and at all of the art fairs therefore, assuming that I was “artistic” and that I always was smiling but all of these things mean little to me, because they are not lasting.

At a pivotal point in my middle school days I was made a “new creation in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). It happened while I was at summer camp during seventh grade; God spoke to my heart. I had been sitting in the forest with a group of people about my age and someone began to pray. In truth, I would have rather not been there at all, as I recall wishing that I was been back home watching TV or playing around on the computer. Regardless of how I felt, God’s desire for me became much stronger and I began to fervently pray, asking Jesus to come into my life and make me whole. (At the time I had no idea how wonderfully my life would change after this night.) It’s hard to explain the intensity that occurs when God speaks to someone, but the first time was enough to cause me to both cry and laugh for over an hour. Since that time I have grown in my faith and in my relationship with the living God. I now realize that I am a “member of Christ’s body” (Ephesians 5:30) and that I am a “fellow citizen” with the rest of God’s family (Ephesians 2:19). I had never felt like I fit into the world that we live in and plenty of times growing up my mother would find me crying in my room because I did not feel like I was in the right place. She would always comfortingly say, “We are aliens and strangers to this world that we temporarily live in.” Later on I marveled at her quote of scripture from 1 Peter 2:11. The world will never completely satisfy, nothing in it ever will, only God fully satisfies and we will only be made complete when we are living in God’s presence. As I grew, this knowledge became ingrained in me and I knew that I had been bought by a price (Jesus’ blood); I was not my own and I belonged totally to God (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Galatians 2:20 tells us that if we believe in Christ Jesus, that He lived, died for our sins and was raised from the dead, then we have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer ourselves who live, but Christ living in us and the life which we are now living is Christ’s life.

Ever since I first read Proverbs 31 I desired to be a woman of noble character, selfless, righteous and follower of Christ. Some of the most beautiful women I have ever known have been women who may not have been exceptionally beautiful by the world’s standards on the outside, but their faces and actions shone with God's grace and truth. They were women of noble character and I want to be like them. For the first time, this was not something I could fake my way through. Their shining light was something real and I longed to be exactly like them. Though I later realized that it is really Jesus that I long to live and seek after, because that’s what these women had done. Therefore the biggest compliment I think I have ever received has been from my friend David who not only told me that I had that same way of reflecting God’s grace and truth that I so admired, but also that I was, “most certainly a woman of noble character.” This compliment confirmed to me that in Christ was where I now placed my identity. I have always desired to be a proclaimer of the Gospel both in action and in speech and to be a real person in this fake world that we live in. “You are a blessing to everyone you meet whether you know it or not,” my friend David once told me.

In all truth, I try hard to place myself entirely out of circumstances around me and just let the Lord lead me and guide me. The Bible never tells us that a personal relationship with God is going to be easy, but it does say that our walk will lead to only good. It’s a long hard journey but it has proven itself to be good one-hundred times over. Trusting that God’s will is always done in my life is not an easy process, and I do not claim to have perfected it yet as I still have a long way to go, but as “Christ himself is in me” (Colossians 1:27) I know that all things work according to them who love God. Placing my identity fully in Christ has been one of the most rewarding and prosperous things I have ever done in my life.

“Who are you?” the young man doing the interview had asked me, “Not who people see you as but who are you on the inside? Who do you say that you are?” Hardly missing a beat, I took a deep breath, looked into the camera and answered, “I am a beloved child of God, with whom He is well pleased and I am made complete in Christ.” My interviewer and the camera man both smiled at me as I answered, and the interview was over.

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1 All quoted or cited scripture can be found in the New King James Version or New International Version of the Holy Bible