We all want to belong. We all want to feel
valued. There are many of us who feel we deserve to be noticed and there are
many of us who feel like we just want to fade into the background, and then there
are others who fall somewhere in between.
I am the oldest of four children. I have
three brothers. All of us are very different but we have some kind of family
gene that means we have similar talents and similar natural flairs; that is perhaps
apart from Ben. Ben is my second youngest brother. He is very creative, very
talented, wise, witty and generally he is a leader wherever he goes. He is a
valuable member of any team. Growing up, though, we used to tease him about
being adopted. We all had our own individual fashion senses, we were quite
quirky and we wanted to stand out from the crowd. We were artistic and musical.
Ben was sporty, and none of us were. He loved his tracksuit bottoms and
trainers. He was artistic, creative and musical but in a different way, so my
brothers used to say he was adopted.
He wasn’t. He was just Ben.
Perhaps there is a child in your family
that was teased in this way. Perhaps it
was you. All of our childhood experiences shape us into the people that we are.
I used to feel pretty confident in myself until I was about 15 or 16 and then
my individuality seemed to become something that people around me would mock.
They would say things like ‘What are you wearing that for?’ or ‘you’re so
weird’, in fact one boy in particular used to call me ‘skinny weirdo’. I was
never too bothered by this stuff, but when I look back it shaped me. Perhaps it
took off my quirky edges and made me fit in better amongst my friends or maybe
I lost parts of me. I don’t know but I do remember developing a feeling inside
myself that made me feel like I didn’t fit.
I was confident on the outside but often I
would walk into a room and feel like I didn’t fit or that people didn’t want me
there. This feeling was confronted by a lady who came to visit our church. She
picked me out in a church service and spoke in to my life saying, “There are
times when you have felt like you don’t fit, but God says I’m grafting you in,
you are accepted, you’re my daughter.” Something broke off me with her words,
though sometimes it is still something that every so often is whispered in my
ear and I have to fight it.
The truth is, we only find our place in the
family of God by really understanding who our heavenly father says we are. In
the film Cheaper by the Dozen there
is a scene where one child (one of twelve children) goes to his mum and says,
‘everyone calls me Fed ex because they say the Fed ex guy dropped me off and I
don’t fit in this family.’ His mum pulls him into her for a cuddle and she
says, “You fit! You fit right here!”
That is what God is saying to us. He is
pulling us in to His embrace and saying, “You fit! You fit right here!” Until
we can grasp that we will always be wondering what our role is, whether we are
in the right place, why we can’t find friends that value us for who we are. In
church I think sometimes this stuff is heightened. We think we’ve found our
place on the host team, or as a connect group leader, or on the worship team,
or working with the kids. Whatever it looks like, at the root I guess we all
have similar needs. We just want to be free to be ourselves and to belong.
We don’t need a role or a title in church
to be free to be ourselves, though it can feel like that. We don’t need
acknowledgment from others to know we are in the right place, we just need
Jesus and he will give a place to flourish that might surprise us. There are,
however, some practical things that we can do and some questions we can ask
ourselves that will help us.
The first thing is to stop and ask
ourselves whether we are trying too hard to be someone we are not. Do we feel
lonely because the people we want to be friends with just don’t seem to notice
us? Maybe we are looking for friendship in the wrong place. As church we are
family, we all belong; we all have a place in it, but when it comes to
friendships we don’t need to be friends with everyone. In fact it may not be
healthy. If you are continually striving to fit in within certain people groups
maybe you need to ask yourself if these are the people who are going to make
you soar. Are these people helping you flourish or do they, unknowingly, fuel
your insecurity? We all need friends who we can totally be ourselves with and
if we are putting on a front everyday to fit we need to look ourselves in the
mirror and ask God who He says we are.
Are we trying too hard to please leaders?
If we do too much just to please people we will loose ourselves and loose sight
of Who it is that we are really serving. If you are on the children’s team (or
any team for that matter) to please your leader: STOP! Reassess why you are on that team. You are
there to serve Jesus, to let him use the gifts he has given you. Being on the
right team will help you find your place in the church and we should serve with
everything, it is our worship to God, but when it isn’t anymore we have to stop
and look at our motives and the internal damage it could be doing to us. People
will let us down: God never will. Serve Him first.
Spend time with God. He knows who we are
even when we don’t. I have found that through the toughest things we have
faced, I have lost myself and found myself all at the same time. I lost who I thought
I was. This can be such an isolating process. It can feel like no one has
noticed that you are not the same person anymore, but you’re not the same and
you never will be again. I had to get to know the new version of me, the one
with broken pieces that didn’t fit together anymore. Illness can do this to us,
grief can do this, depression all sorts of things can leave us bewildered and
in the middle of an identity crisis. Sometimes we need to be brave enough to
let go of things in order to find new things. I was disturbed in my
comfortableness! And I had to understand that only God, my source, my song, can
use the stuff that life throws at me to refine me and shape me. 1 Peter 4 in The
Message says this:
Since
Jesus went through everything you’re going through and more, learn to think
like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of
always expecting to get your own way. Then you’ll be able to live out your days
free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want.
Too often our motives are about getting
what we want and even getting what we think we have earnt or deserve. None of
us deserve any of this. We don’t deserve the gifts that God freely gives us and
we don’t deserve recognition. None of these things will help us fit but if we
can learn to work in our giftings quietly and diligently behind the scenes we
will feel fulfilled. Some people are called to lead others, some aren’t and
leadership comes in many forms. You don’t need a platform to lead in life.
Sometimes we think we should be something that we are not and we will spend our
lives feeling unfilled, undervalued and overlooked. Titus 3:14 in the NIV says,
“Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to
provide for urgent needs and not to live unproductive lives.” The MSG puts it
like this: ‘Our people have to learn to be diligent in their work so that all
necessities are met (especially among the needy) and they don’t end up with
nothing to show for their lives.’
I don’t want to be someone who has nothing
to show for my life, but I don’t want that to come in the form of acclamation
or recognition, I want to bear fruit for the Kingdom. If we try to be someone
that we are not there is an ‘us’ shaped hole left in the places where we could
flourish. If we don’t get over ourselves someone else will do the stuff that we
could do and they will go on to lead fruitful lives while we sit and look on
feeling sorry for ourselves.
Ask a good friend or a trusted leader to
tell you where they think your giftings are. Others can often see this stuff
better than we can because iron sharpens iron and then get over yourself! Get
over your wants and look only to what God wants. Sometimes hunger for the
things of God is shown in discontentment, sometimes discontentment is just
about our own selfishness. Learn to discern between the two.
We need to help each other find our place.
We need to be brave enough to acknowledge when we are wrong. We need to correct
the lies of the enemy over each other and speak truth and life, instead of
being jealous or insecure and we need to be more like Jesus. Stop striving and
rest in the embrace of Father God. Today and everyday He is saying:
‘You fit! You fit right here!’
