If you go check out my coaching blog I have a series on the Five Identity Pillars of the human person that we need to know and be convicted of their truth down to the level of our bones if we are going to live a full and purposeful life. The Five Pillars are: the right to exist, the power of agency, a unique mission, destined for happiness and worthy of love. You may have heard the principles of these pillars woven in and out throughout the episodes of my Grateful Blessed Mess Podcast, but the more I grow in this arena, the more I uncover and I think, I have finally gotten to the core of the identity crisis so many of us experience that leads us to addiction and codependency. 

You see, I could tell you a thousand times over that you are Good, that you Matter and that you are Enough, but if you don't believe that about yourself, you are going to reject that from me. With the help of  the work of Dr. Peter Malinoski from Souls and Hearts, and the information from his ICC Podcast, off of which I am largely piggy backing in this insight, is came to see that I cannot accept these pillars to be true or rest in their Truth if my image of God is off. If the "God of my understanding" is not one of kindness, tenderness, mercy and love, but is colored with the stain of my painful life experiences that have caused me to believe, whether I am aware of it or not, that God is unkind, judgmental, critical, distant, selfish or absent, then I will never be able to rest in the Dignity of who I am, I will never fully believe that I have a right to exist, that I am powerful, that I have been made for a unique mission, that I am destined for and wired for happiness  and that I am worthy of love.  And if I am unable to accept these tenets and believe them to be true, then I will never fully be able to live in the significance of who I am. I will continue to feel hollow, to feel like something is missing, to feel that life has lost its luster, to feel meaningless, to lack joy and creativity, to want more but feel too afraid to desire because the risk of disappointment is too high.

You see, I need to know the truth about the Bestower of my Identity. The Five Pillars I discuss exist because they were put into place by "a power greater than myself." I believe them to be true for myself and for you completely, but I know for myself, when things get hard, there are one or two of them that start to crumble. The moment I suspect one or two (or three or five) of them to be true, because of my own personal wounds that I have incurred, my security in my identity starts to diminish and I am no longer able to show up for life the same way. 

This is why it is imperative in adulthood that we work through our wounds and to heal. They block us from knowing the God of our understanding and in so doing, we cannot fully know and embrace Who We Are and that is the saddest outcome of any life - one that fizzles, one that never got on the ride because it looked to scary and it was safer to stay back. Stay back for what? For more of the same? For what is less but predictable? We indulged in our substance because it gave us the mirage of life seeming easy and comfortable, but when we live in our God given identity, our Gifts, and our Strengths, life does become easy. When we start to experience the fun and the joy of persevering in something hard but fulfilling, we no longer settle for what is comfortable but we feel unleashed to live boldly!

I haven't arrived, none of us have, but join me as we trudge the road to happy destiny.

If you are not sure which areas of your identity have been most affected by life's hardships, start with my assessment to shed some light. 

And remember, God is good, and He loves you!