While I was at USU working on my Bachelors and taking an adolescent development class, one of the things our professor had us do was to write “I Am” statements, then we handed them in at the end of class. Many of us had written, “I am a child of God.” The following class our professor who was a visiting professor from Brazil, followed up with what we had written. He didn’t have a problem with the statement but had a problem with how general it was. He then asked us to write what that meant to us being a child of God, how that helped us with our self-confidence, why it was important to us and how it played into our personal identity. He then went on to explain how one of the things adolescents are trying to do, is find themselves. Who are they? Why are they here? Who do they want to become?
What is interesting is those are things that I now ask myself. Who am I? Why am I still here? Who am I trying to become? I am rebuilding my identity and purpose in this life. It is easy to base your identity on what you do, the hats that you wear, responsibilities you have. However, is that truly your identity? That is something you will have to answer yourself. It is interesting too, that so much of our worth is based around those things. We find value in the various hats we wear.
I feel like most of my hats have been taken or pushed aside. I am no longer a mom, yes, I am a mom to Archer, but I no longer get to wear that in this life. I no longer teach, nor do I want to. I am still a daughter, wife, sister, and friend. Really what you are going to see is that I have lost a lot of who I am and feel lost because of that. I have no one to pass things on to, so heirlooms really are pointless for me to have. What can I offer this world? What AM I? See how it circles back? I must constantly go back to the basics of what I believe, the building blocks of who I am, because what I want to be just isn’t going to happen in this life, and it doesn’t determine my worth.
That is the problem though, this life is so limiting. So many people don’t get married, don’t have children, do get married and have miserable relationships, have horrible health, the list goes on and on. If we base our worth in only our hats, we have then forgotten the one true identity that matters, that We Are Children of God. Joy D. Jones said, “Let me point out the need to differentiate between two critical words: worth and worthiness. They are not the same. Spiritual worth means to value ourselves the way Heavenly Father values us, not as the world values us. Our worth was determined before we ever came to this earth” (Value beyond Measure). Elder J. Devn Cornish said, “We torture ourselves needlessly by competing and comparing. We falsely judge our self-worth by the things we do or don’t have and by the opinions of others” (Am I Good Enough? Will I Make It?). I constantly sell myself short and allow Satan to blind me to my worth.
In Moses 1, Moses, sees God face to face and is told that he is God’s son. He is told that God had specific work for him to do and shows Moses his creations. After God left Moses, Satan comes to him, calling him son of man, limiting his worth, and asks him instead to worship Satan. Moses having been in the presence of God, knew that Satan had no glory and told him so. Moses had seen his worth, felt the love of God and believed His words. He didn’t allow Satan to sell him short by telling him that he had no worth, that he was just the son of a man. It is something that I need to work on, not allowing my worth to be determined by being a daughter of man, selling myself short of the divine nature I possess, I am a Child of God.
In Romans 8:16-17 it states: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” For me the key words that stand out with this are that the spirit bears witness that we are children of God. That we can know our worth. It isn’t something that we need to flounder and wonder about, but that the truth of all things, as stated in Moroni 10, can be made known to us. So, when we are doubting our worth, we know where to look. Not to employment, accomplishments or lack thereof, but to the infinite and omniscient source of knowledge, our Heavenly Father.
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