Nouns, Verbs, Sobriety, and Finding Out Who I Am

So the question I got last week from an older, wiser man, seemed simple: who are you? But I found it frustratingly difficult to answer. A week later, I still do.

I wonder if at 35 I should have a more concrete answer. And some responses come to mind pretty quickly, but I think that there are some easy ways to go wrong here.

For example, who I am is not what I do. What I do is a title, a job, it's the good work that the "me" performs and it's what I've been called to. But "campus minister" is, in this particular instance, functioning more like an adjective than a noun.

I apologize to you non-English majors who got lost in that sentence, stick with me.

This morning I was trying to answer the question. It won't just go away: who are you? And I came across this from Paul in his letter to the Romans that helped me a bit:

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment... (Romans 12:3)

It seems that humility is simply seeing yourself rightly. It's not thinking of yourself more highly (or more lowly) than you ought. It's dealing with the realities of who we are, not the shadows, smoke and mirrors and play-acting that we so often (or maybe I should say that I so often) participate in.

We think we know ourselves and our stories and that we don't know or understand God. But the reality is, we do not know ourselves nor do we fully understand God. There is mystery to both.

Only God fully knows and understands us. And so the pathway to self-understanding starts outside ourselves, as we delve into the only true mirror that is God, our source, the one who made us and redeems us and sees us fully as we truly are. And as I look to Jesus, I'm starting to catch glimpses and outlines of who I really am.

One day, there's a promise that I'll get a new name, a name on a white stone known only to me and my good Father. That's who I truly am. That's who I'm becoming, by his grace. It's the name that when I receive it my heart will burst with joy and overflow with thanksgiving and be silenced and stilled with awe-struck tears: yes, that is who I am. You know me. You love me. Thank you.

In the mean time, I keep asking, seeking, trying to remain rooted in sober judgment. I am looking towards the one day when I will press through all these adjectives and come out on the other side into the presence of that One Great Noun who will show me who I truly am and who will once and for all give me my true name.