Who am I?

What is my identity? What or who do I let define who I am? It seems simple enough. And while I can say that it's one thing, my actions don't always reflect that. Maybe putting it in writing will give it more definition.

I am Matthew Lewis Adams Snyder. I am discovering the person that God is making me. It would be easy to root my identity in my job, in what I do for a living, maybe even where I've come from. Or I could pull out the Christian tag and say that my identity is found in Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives through me. Each response is good in its own right, but each is also prone to a lot of criticism.

I need to realize, however, that my identity is not in what others think of me. My identity truly is in the latter camp: it's in who I am in Christ Jesus. The problem? My identity is constantly fluctuating because in our society we recognize and match people's identity with what they do. I am definately a follower of God.

I can't, unfortunately, neglect my human condition. I'll never, in this life, be able to always succeed in chasing my identity in Christ. Therefore, I am a broken and fallen follower of Christ Jesus. Yes, there'll be days that I have it together, that I can chase after God recklessly and with complete abandon to myself and the world around me, but I'll also have days that I get caught up in myself, that I care too much about what others think of me, and God's appeal becomes less attractive, and I try to make a name for myself. Those are the days that I stop chasing. I stand still and let God turn around and watch me make a fool of myself. Sometimes I stand with my feet in both doors. That's usually when I lose sight of who I am and I forget about my true identity.

The only way to truly find myself is to look to Christ Jesus, because without Him I am incomplete. And there's no better way to find myself than to do so chasing after God, with God, the One who knows who I really am, the One who completes me.

So, as foolish and simple - perhaps as cliche as it sounds - my identity is in Christ. I am a fallen and broken follower of Jesus. Anyone who tell sme otherwise: may God bless them with wisdom and the knowledge to recognize that they're no different than me.

It just makes sense. If God's the one who completes me, if God's the one who can tell me who I "am", then why chase after something else, especially a worldly ideal? It's just stupid. And I do it all the time because it looks so frickin' appealing to me. But then something inside me snaps and it triggers this thought of eternity. This thought that, well, when I die I will be forgotten here. It doesn't matter what name I make for myself. I can always count on people to forget me. So why not become who God wants me to become? Why not become who I am to be for eternity?

And why don't I ever makes sense, even to myself?