Who am I?

Rooted in Him: Knowing Who You Are Through Every Season

Moms of Grace Teaching Series: Unshakable Faith

By Darla Butterfield

It's one of those motherhood moments that's seared into my memory… the frustration, fear, questions, and feeling like I wasn't measuring up as a mom… and I had just become one. All the hormones and emotions hit at once, and the tears just kept coming. What I thought would come naturally wasn't turning out at all like I had imagined. Who was I now as a mom, if I couldn't even feed my baby? My body wasn't working like it should have, and I felt like a failure.

I sat in the lactation consultant's office, holding my newborn son, as she handed me formula to feed him so he wouldn't starve. My body hadn't recovered well after being induced due to pre-eclampsia, and though he would latch, I wasn't producing enough milk. Weight check after weight check showed his need for more nourishment.

Reality fell woefully short of what I had expected as I transitioned into motherhood. I'd taken all the classes. Attended every prenatal appointment. Followed every recommendation. Yet here I was, stepping into a new season, trying to succeed in a new identity as a mom, and racked with despair, guilt, and discouragement.

Can you think of a specific moment when your sense of identity felt shaken by motherhood, the way mine did in that lactation consultant's office? What was that moment for you?

Everything was shifting… from the classroom and title of high school math teacher to stay-at-home mom, with nothing to show for it. I had enjoyed that when people found out what I did for a living, they were usually impressed… either that I was smart enough to teach advanced math, or brave enough to teach high schoolers. What would people think of me now, if all they knew was that I was a stay-at-home mom? Where I could once measure success in how well-crafted my lesson plans were and how well my students scored on the AP Calculus exam, I now couldn't even feed my baby with my own body… something that should have come naturally.

Who am I?

As the months wore on, I rode the roller coaster of joy and fear, love and doubt, hope and questions. Becoming a mom was what I had longed for, and I loved my son more than I ever imagined I could… but there were doubts and fears just below the surface. I was realizing how much my identity had been wrapped up in my career, and now I was placing that same weight on my new role as a mom. That meant my sense of who I was suffered every time I couldn't feed him properly, or when he wasn't the calmest child in the church nursery, or when his language development wasn't as impressive as his cousins'.

Later, when I worked as an online teacher, I wondered if I'd be seen as not giving my son enough attention because I was working. Regardless of how our work roles shift when we become moms, we likely all struggle with some version of this… guilt, fear, and the quiet question of whether what we're doing is enough for us to feel good about who we are.

In that first year of motherhood, I made two choices that changed everything: I joined a moms' group, and I joined a women's Bible study at my church.

It was in that moms' group that I discovered I wasn't the only mom who struggled to feed her baby. I wasn't the only one wrestling through the roller coaster of emotions, and my child wasn't the only one who wasn't perfect in the nursery. That community of moms helped me see that I wasn't alone, and I wasn't a failure. Their advice and encouragement made all the difference.

The women's Bible study fed my soul. I dug into Scripture alongside other women, many of them far more seasoned than me, and they mentored me. That study anchored me in the Truth of God's Word and reminded me who I really am… and that my identity was never meant to rest in a career title or in my role as a mom. When I find my identity in Christ, and in who He says I am, I'm no longer swayed by how well I perform in any role. When I see myself as God sees me, I remember… I'm His daughter, and I always will be.

Who or what have you leaned on in hard seasons of motherhood: a friend, a community, God's Word? What difference did it make?

Let's take a moment to take off the titles we carry and set them aside, so we can look past them to the identity that doesn't change.

What titles or accomplishments (past or present) are you tempted to find your identity in?

Here's what mine looks like:

• Pastor's kid

• Valedictorian

• High school math teacher

• Mom of four kids

• Bible study leader, author, teacher

• Licensed Chaplain

These aren't bad things. They tell a true story about my personality and the gifts God's given me. But my identity was never meant to be anchored in them… because those are shifting sands, and we'll find ourselves lost at sea the moment our role changes, our child starts school or graduates, or our measure of success falls short of what we hoped.

So where do we find our identity? When all those titles and accomplishments are set aside, what remains?

Let's turn to what the Bible says about who we are:

• You are seen

  • Hagar in Genesis 16:13 “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

• You are loved

  • Ephesians 3:16-19 “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

• You are chosen

  • Ephesians 1:4 “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”

  • Isaiah 41:9–10 “I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

• You are redeemed

  • Ephesians 1:7-8 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”

  • Colossians 1:13–14 “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

• You are His daughter

  • Galatians 4:4–7 “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”

  • The woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5:34 “He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

• You have purpose

  • Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

• You have value

  • Luke 12:6-7 “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

  • Psalm 139:13-16 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

• You are not alone

  • Deuteronomy 31:8 “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

  • Isaiah 43:1-3 “But now, this is what the Lord says— he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior”

• You have the Holy Spirit

  • Ephesians 1:13-14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”

    
    

Which of these statements most encourages you in the season you're in right now? Why?

Which of these truths is hardest for you to actually believe, even if you know it in your head?

If you fully believed today that your identity is secure in Christ, what would change about how you're mothering, working, or showing up this week?

We'll better understand who we are as we keep our eyes on Jesus and look to who He is. One thing we'll work on together this year is learning to spot the lies that creep into our thinking and replace them with the Truth of God's Word. Let's see what that looks like through the lens of identity.

These are some examples in my own life of moments that reveal I'm not anchoring my identity in Christ:

• When I take it too personally that my child misbehaves or doesn't succeed where I had hoped.

• When I measure my worth by my accomplishments or my failures.

• When I'm not living up to an ideal shaped by tradition or by what I've been told I should be, instead of holding to the Truth of God's Word.

  
  

These aren't just my struggles. Many of us were handed a very specific picture of what a "good" Christian woman looks like, long before we ever opened a Bible to check if it was true. If you've always been told that your worth as a woman is found in your ability to keep your home tidy, cook well, raise perfectly behaved kids, and keep your husband happy, then you haven't yet seen the real picture the Bible paints of women God used in powerful ways for His glory.

What's a lie about your identity that you find yourself believing more often than you'd like to admit?

Where did that lie come from? A specific comment, a comparison, an expectation you were raised with?

When I find myself spiraling into one of these false identity traps, I have a choice to either continue entertaining the lie in my mind or replace the lie with God's Word. Who am I, really, according to Scripture? Sometimes one of the verses we've covered today is exactly what I need. Other times, what rescues me most is remembering the story of a woman in the Bible, how God used her, and remembering that He can use me too. That's often how I escape the enemy's traps of lies.

Scripture is full of women whose stories prove that our past doesn't disqualify us from God's purposes. God worked through the lives of women in the Bible from all different backgrounds and seasons of life. He even chose a Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42) who had been through multiple marriages and was currently living with a man she wasn’t married to, to be the one Jesus would reveal Himself as Messiah to and she would go on to evangelize her entire community! Your past does not define what God can do in your life right now or in the future. Your marital status or the number of children you have doesn’t limit God’s ability to work in your life for His purposes for you.

There is freedom, joy, and hope on the pages of Scripture when we dig deep and see ourselves for who God made us to be, individually and collectively, as His daughters. We don't have to fit into a box we were never meant to fill.

And there's grace.

Ephesians 2:8–9

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Rest in the grace of God, knowing you don't have to be perfect to receive His love. You are chosen. You are His daughter.

Some days that truth will look like sitting in a lactation consultant's office, formula in hand, wondering who you even are anymore. And on those days, may you remember: you were never meant to be defined by what your body could or couldn't do, by your child’s behavior, or by any title you carry. You are seen. You are chosen. You are loved. You are His daughter. That’s your identity.