Do you ever feel like there are multiple pieces of you and no single person has all of them? Like you are a prism and they can only see the white light, not the colors? Perhaps you are a swimmer or a soccer player to one group of friends, then an anime enthusiast or a die-hard Taylor Swift fan? Well then, welcome friends. You aren’t alone. Because most of my life I have felt this same tension.

I grew up in an athletic household so some of you may know the drill: My parents would wake me and my siblings up when the day was still dark to train our bodies to peak performance in Gymnastics and we would plod home with sore muscles and sweat staining our favorite training shirts or leotards. Our entire family were Gymnasts but we dabbled in Swimming and Soccer (God bless anyone who’s taken a soccer ball to the face! Thank goodness he made us hard-headed). I loved it: the sense of accomplishment, teamwork, and gasps of awe my friends would give me when I boasted I could do a backflip. It was my identity.

The thing is, unlike any of my family, I really liked to read and write, too. If you asked me if I wanted to spend hours alone curled up on a couch with a good book or dreaming up new characters and writing stories about them, I would ask where I could sign up! I loved how words, too, could hold worlds

of friendship, teamwork, and accomplishment. Because of this, it grew and I adopted this identity, also.

Until they both began to fight each other. After all, how could I write well when I could barely move my arms from how sore they felt after practice? Or how could I focus on doing my training if I was caught up in the latest character death from Harry Potter? How could I reconcile my “inner jock” and “inner nerd”? How could they both be my identity?

But I was asking the wrong questions. Instead, I should have asked,

            “Should I be finding and basing my entire identity on these things?”

I was so caught up in fretting about whether or not I should be only a writer or only a Gymnast that I did not realize where my identity should actually rest. Instead of trying to frantically scrape together an identity from the things in this world I loved but couldn’t reconcile, I can rest in these facts: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27).

and, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

God made me and you just as we are. He is my Father and Lord first, so when He is on the throne of my heart everything else falls into place. My athletic side and my writing side can be at peace because they are an outpouring of who God has made me in him, not the foundation of my identity. So, to all of you out there seeking to reconcile your body and your mind; your likes and dislikes; your hobbies and relationships; don’t look inward. Instead, look upwards to Christ, who saved you from your sins and bought you with a heavy price and sits, alive, at the right hand of the throne of God.

“He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.” ~John 1:11-13