Tag: Identity

I’ve heard God doesn’t make mistakes.

I’ve heard it is impossible…

Everything about you. Your nationality, your skin color, gender, hair texture. How expressive or reserved you are. How introverted or extroverted you are. Your ability to sing or create art or to fearlessly barrel race horses. Your laugh.

NONE OF IT IS A MISTAKE.

God knew exactly what he was doing when he reached across time and space and birthed you in the darkness and fashioned you into something spectacular.

You are not a mistake.

It is impossible for you to be a mistake. Because it is impossible for God to make mistakes.

I spent my whole life thinking I was a mistake. That who I was was so shameful. The way I theatrically tell stories, how I want to weep for three days every time I watch The Green Mile. How making a space look beautiful fills me up with so much joy I cannot even express it. How injustice makes my blood boil. How my idea of “good church” involves crying with and laughing with and eating with a handful of people at a time.

Because I always thought I should want other things. I should be less passionate. Less emotional. More practical. More extroverted. Less awkward for heaven’s sake (Lord, above have mercy).

But none of these things about me is a mistake.

It’s weird, but not weird at the same time, to say that THE WORLD NEEDS YOU! And it needs ME. And not in a self-absorbed way, but simply because we are here and because we exist means that God destined for each one of us to be here.

The family he placed us in is not a mistake. Your birth order. Gender.

The country we were born in is not a mistake.

Our skin color is not a mistake. And all those freckles you have or don’t have.

God isn’t surprised you made it earth-side. He isn’t surprised you think post-it-notes can save the world, or that you haven’t been able to find a pair of matching socks in your house since 2007.

God knit you together and created you exactly perfect. Where you are standing right now, that earth beneath your feet that bears the weight of your presence, it is sacred because a sacred being stands upon it: you.

You are priceless. Invaluable. Never compared against another. Never regretted by God.

You are not what has happened to you. What someone took from you or did to you. You are not what someone else says you are, or even who you say you are. You are deeply and irrevocably eternal and brokenness is not eternal.

Stand in this today. Say it out loud. Because a thousand voices are telling you otherwise. Speak this truth over yourself and your children and all the people…that you are not a mistake.

God doesn’t make mistakes.

I’ve heard it is impossible.

It is impossible for you to be anything other than exactly what God created. And this is not something to fear, it is something to rest in.