Dr. Tonya T. Strickland

That strategy resulted in much collateral damage to my soul:

• It prevented me from being vulnerable and close to anyone;

• It kept me focused on myself and not others;

• It kept me from feeling truly loved;

• It created a constant need for pretense;

• It stopped me from knowing myself;

• It kept me from a relationship with God.

I became so good at wearing masks and putting up walls of defense that I didn’t know I was wearing masks and putting up walls of defense.

I had built my sense of identity on the shifting sands of insecurity. Thus, I needed an identity cover-up because at some level, I knew I was broken, and I wanted to hide my brokenness, much like Eve and Adam did. After they decided not to trust God, they realized their own nakedness and tried, unsuccessfully, to hide from him.

My Distorted View of God

Sometimes we hide from God because we don’t know who he is any more than we know who we are. I wasn’t brought up in church, but as a child, I had a picture Bible and also a painting of Jesus hanging above my bed. And I also had a portrait of Zorro that I alternated with my picture of Jesus. When my mother asked why I alternated the pictures, I explained that I had just one nail.

My understanding of God was that of a rule giver, and I believed that my responsibility to God was to be a morally good person. My parents taught me right from wrong, so I tried my best to always do the right. And then I covered it up when I didn’t.

Besides my own distorted view of God, there are other wrong images of God that create all sorts of trouble. A common image of God is that of a feeble grandfather in the sky who doesn’t really know or understand what’s happening in our lives. Another is that of a timekeeper who does little else other than monitor a timeline of events and distribute tickets to heaven. Other views of God are as an angry bully with a big stick, an unreliable father not to be trusted, or someone with more important tasks than taking care of unimportant people.

Finally Free!

Until we know God as the one who deeply loves us in our brokenness and who desires to fully heal us, we will experience an identity crisis. I was thirty years old before I was able to admit my brokenness to God. I was reading the Bible and a verse leapt off the page into my heart—“There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). I remember thinking, “What? Nobody is good? Not them, not me? Then I don’t have to keep pretending!” Relief washed over me as I realized that God knew and loved the naked me. He created, chose, redeemed, and purposed me—and all of that had nothing to do with my own goodness! I was finally free to be broken because I finally understood that God loves not the righteous people (there are none) but the broken! I can’t explain how I had missed knowing that in the five years I’d been reading the Bible. But those words of God led to spiritual transformation, and I was no longer the rule-keeper pleasing the rule-giver. I was the beloved.

If you don’t yet know yourself as God’s beloved, consider what he says about you:

I welcome you. (from Romans 15:7)

I love you and gave myself for you. (from Galatians 2:20)

Because you are my child, I sent the Spirit of my Son into your heart (from Galatians 4:6)

Wherever you are, I’ll find you—I’m already there waiting! (from Psalm 139:10)

I am working in you both to will and to work according to my good purpose (from Philippians 2:13)

Absolutely nothing will ever separate you from my love (from Romans 8:39)

You are God’s beloved, and he has blessed you with an identity as his image-bearer, which means that he has made you to be loved and then to love him and others. As the moon reflects the sun, you are to reflect God’s love to his world, which is possible only because God is light and love. Therefore, because we are created as God’s image-bearer and renewed in Christ, our sense of identity must start with God. If you’d like to know more, join our community: