Your Bio According to I John

Gotta question for you this morning.

When this little pink angel princess takes off her wings, will she still be a pink angel princess?

I know, I know…a rather interesting thought to ponder on a Monday morning, right? But I promise, this blog DOES have a point. :)

Recently, I wrote an article for a magazine and I was asked to send the publishers a 50-word bio to tell the readers a little bit about who I was. I wrote the typical bio, describing me as a wife and mom and author and communicator and sent it on. But when I got the proof back several months later and read over the information I gave them, the words I had written to give me identity suddenly didn’t sit well with me.

I thought back to the time when my husband lost his job. Prior to that time, if you had asked me to define who I was to you, I would have surely included in my personal description the title of “ministry wife,” as my husband held a prestigious position in a thriving non-profit organization. But when that job was lost, I found myself as a ministry wife no longer.

But even though my title had changed due to circumstance, I was still the same me. Only now I was a “former ministry wife” of a “really awesome guy who held no ministry position.” It was in those months of fear and desperation that I began to realize that who I was would need to be defined by something other than my husband’s job in the future. Otherwise, "I" might never stop changing.

It was a great lesson for me to learn, though sometimes I still forget. Sometimes I have to remind myself of the very real danger in defining myself by the ways God lets me use my gifts, my time and my energies. Though I love the “roles” God has blessed me with in my life, I cannot base my identity on them. Because as I learned with my husband’s job, defining myself by any outside position will cause a major identity crisis if and when that outside position changes. And as uncertain as life is, that is likely, at some point, to happen.

Some of you can attest to this, as you have had life throw changes at you in every direction. Some of you know what it’s like to define yourself as something, only to see that definition crumble before your very eyes. Some of you have had to “re-define” your life, working with a different definition than you originally thought or even, chose.

Girlfriends...we need to remember that what defines us is not our marital status, our job, our accomplishments or anything else that is built on status or circumstance, as wonderful and awesome as they may be. But rather, who we are is based upon our spiritual heritage…our inheritance of faith as a beautifully created daughter of God (Psalm 139). We are not our tagline, our bio or our resume. As I have said in many blogs before, we are not what we do.

My bio has now changed. Where I used to list my credentials and roles in life as who I am I now list them as the things God graciously lets me do in this season of my life. Lisa Whittle is no longer listed as a “wife, mother, author and communicator,” but a “beautifully created daughter of God who fulfills her life purpose by being a wife and mom, a communicator to women and author.” It is a bio I can feel comfortable with, knowing that my status as a daughter of God won’t change based on what else happens in my life.

It's also a lesson my pink "princessy" daughter needs to know so that when she takes off her pink princess angel wings she will still feel “princessy.” Not because of the costume she wears, but because of her status in the eternal Kingdom of God that is rightly worn on the inside.

May she and all of us know today that we are not our tagline.

May we define ourselves by our bio found in I John 3:1, and may we live in celebration of it.

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"

P.S. More tomorrow, Yes to God girlfriends, for chapter 8. Can't wait to roll around in the message of that chapter! :)