Who am I?

Identity is such a key topic, on which most of the rest of our life is built. And yet it is a topic to which most of us usually give precious-little attention.

Perhaps that’s just because it is elusive. Perhaps because we yearn for answers different to those we’re prepared to believe. It is certainly a topic for which any number of assumptions are easier than the smallest quantity of deep study!

There’s nothing like a crisis to force questions of identity to the surface.

And there’s nothing that can strip back assumptions more readily than having the object of said assumptions ripped out from under you.

So who am I? I am a husband, a father, a family man, perhaps even at a pinch a businessman. And yet I no longer have a wife, and my kids don’t want me in their world (in any practical sense), and the recent marital separation has wrenched my business* from my hands. So how do I be a husband without a wife, a family man without children, a businessman without a business to lead?

I’ve no idea. None at all.

I suspect that all paths towards those answers involve some space for reflection, some time to uncoil the spring. My default posture has always been to charge like a bull-at-a-gate at the first flag I can put on a distant hill. Somehow I sense this is not the time for that stubborn and bullish pursuit.

Who am I?

In this season of “stripping back”, I’m deeply grateful to know that while “husband”, “father” and certainly “businessman” may be reflections or outworkings of my identity, they’re not core or foundational – that’s right; not even “father” or “husband”.

From where I sit, our best “doing” comes from our “being”, and our best “being” comes from our “whose-ing” – from “whose we are”. I suspect “identity” is wrapped up partly in our being and significantly in our whose-ing.

So one lens into this trip is that my God and I are both adventurous spirits, and so we’re heading on an adventure together. I want to find out more – or experience more deeply – whose I am.

It is amazing to me how many return to questions of faith in existential crisis. So often even the most strident atheist. (Given that observation, one is tempted to ask “why wait until your own crisis?”… but that is another question.)

Some in crisis throw themselves at God with raised fists, railing angrily and asking “why could a good God let this happen?” Others in a crisis throw themselves on God, asking “what can I learn from this, and in what ways should can I let this furnace refine, purify and reshape me?” I’m determined in my own tear-stained, fragmented, rough-and-ready way to adopt the latter not the former posture. It is just a better place to be.

Perhaps that’s the compass for my navigation on this bike ride. But it doesn’t provide a map. Or if it is the map, I missed the cartography class. This feels like a thought that should be “going somewhere”, but I’ve got nothing more to add at this stage. I can only wait to see how if and it unfolds day by day.

Meanwhile, it hints at the only answer I can truly offer to the “who am I?” question. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus, who’s death on a cross 2,000 years ago took the penalty for all my self-inflicted crises past, present and future. I’m stripped back to nothing more nor less than this. I suspect the pain of crisis is inevitable in this life, but how we respond is a matter of choice. Through gritted teeth I know I must allow this crucible to remove (reduce) the dross in my life and draw me towards who I have been made to be.

I know that will involve transformation of character, and suspect it will involve transformation of contribution as well. God only knows whether I will come out of this still a husband, a father (in any practical sense), a businessman. From my perspective it is all in Heaven’s hands, and my best posture is to accept rather than fight it. My the rolling kilometres under the bike help unfold these mysteries!

To lighten the mood on a different topic, I’ve been enjoying Darwin’s dramatic skyline. Although it offers foreboding warnings of the cyclone season that forces my chances of Timor transit down towards the “impossible” end.

 


* Just for accuracy and completeness – I still have minority passive shares in the second business we founded, but no material leadership contribution.

3 Comments

  • Jenny van den Bosch

    You are a son. My son. I’m deeply proud of you and thankful for you.

    The photos are wonderful.

    The exploration of identity is so relevant in the current social climate and I appreciate the direction of your thoughts

    God says ‘I am’. In the light of that, we are. Is everything else perhaps a role for an alotted time?

  • Indeed. Actually I ended to include “a son” and it didn’t find the keyboard. I am (we each are) many things. I am also a brother, a friend, an adventurer, a wannabe artist and musician, etc etc.

  • Lynn Winkler

    Most importantly, you are God’s beloved child.

Leave a Reply

Get the latest news from Daniel on his journey

Just shoot us your email. Thanks. :-)

    © 2022 Powered by VIP Mission Hosting