One afternoon I was driving during an errand, when something in a sermon I was listening to struck me. The message was on purpose – how you can identify that purpose. For someone who was approaching the 30th birthday, it was a question I was revisiting more often now to make sense of life.
Everyone had a purpose the speaker said. And if the manufacturer of the iPad cares enough to explain to you how to use it, where to find important functions and what to do in the case of a defect, what more the God who created who created you?
I was challenged, for the first time to really ask myself hard hitting questions and not stop until I got them right! I wanted to know who God says I am.
For the next few days that’s all that I would think about. Eventually, I remembered an important message I had heard. After the passing of my father, I felt so exposed need of protection. It was so bad 2 days after my 28th birthday I woke up and drove to a church. I had only ever listened to their WhatsApp messages during COVID. I had no idea where I was going or what I was expecting. All I really wanted was to meet the Father.
That Sunday during the first-time visitors ministry, 2 ladies said something that left me in awe. They spoke about my job – accounting- and that I was in that career because God had called me to do the same in life. For some of you, bookkeeping isn’t really a glamorous job -or even one worth speaking of. But for me it is my comfort space.
From that moment I self-tutored myself into an A, and eventually chose it as a degree program, I could feel it in my bones that this is what I was called to. But it didn’t end there, everywhere I went, I was also seeking to put this in order – debiting the receiver, crediting the giver – making use the balance sheet was always fitted right.
I laughed because I thought to myself what kind of God cares so much about the careers, we ‘choose’ for ourselves? So much could be said about such detail. I also felt for the very first time in my life – seen. I wasn’t just another part of the multiverse, breathing to eventually die and there would be nothing to point back that I was ever a part of history. This God knew not just my name, He knew what made me ME.
Unfortunately, so many times who we are is anchored on frivolous things – our beauty, our brains, our relationships, our achievements and our possessions. When you ask others – who do you think I am? The answer we hope demonstrates our triumphs in life, what we have conquered as well as what we have been gifted. But when you have been both beautiful and ugly, rich and poor, wise and foolish, admirable and despicable- trying to find that confidence is a paradox in itself.
I found myself there many times, never quite belonging where I was. But having no connection to where I’d been. I was a girl born in Harare raised in Mutare, Beitbridge, Bulawayo, Gokwe and then Harare. So, when asked where home was. The answer was never easy.
An accounting student pursuing a career in student entrepreneurship. An accounting graduate consulting on digital media marketing and business strategy. A media enthusiast. I almost am tempted to rash over those questions so I don’t have to deal with the long story. Because the short answer is never really enough.
When you look closely there was no place for me to belong. It perhaps seems that I like straddling the lines and colouring outside of the box. And that was the consistent prayer I made to God, show me myself, I want to know who I am. It only took the passing of my father, and my going back to God in need of a father for Him to reveal to me all these things.
It is so empowering knowing that I can go back to my maker and ask Him those personal questions- Who I am? And yes, God knows us, more than we can ever think or imagine. So, I made that decision, I would no longer be defined through my marriage, or my career, or my past. I would only be defined by the one who made me. And I really felt what Haggai felt in Genesis – a slave turned concubine, alone in the wilderness, looking for a place for her and her child, the words “I have seen the one who sees me”
This is my challenge to you today – sit down with God and reconcile who you are in Christ. Be reminded of who you were before you became who you thought you had to be.