Empty Nest Full and Blessed a 5 -Day Reading Plan by Denita ArnoldSample

DAY THREE: WHEN YOU ASK - “WHO AM I?”

Eighteen years! That’s the span of years from the first to the last of our kid clan. This vast gap gave us a unique opportunity where all of our kids attended the same school for thirty-one consecutive years. I spent every one of those years involved at the school. I found myself thrown into the depths of wearing many hats and bearing many titles. Sound familiar? Room mom, team mom, host mom, and the like. I was a regular fixture at their school. It became easy to buy into these roles and titles.

The truth for us all, kids or no kids, is that our identity is not in any hat we wear or the title we bear.

When the house became empty as my children embarked on their own lives, this truth knocked me back. I lived under the pretense that all the roles and every child defined my identity.

Trusting God with all my heart to make my path straight guided me (Proverbs 3:5-6). The process of discovering who I was outside of their lives gave me something to look forward to.

I asked myself the question, “Who am I now? In doing so, it became a joy to reconnect with the truth of what God says about us. The interesting thing is that nowhere in God’s word did I find a description of us as any hat we wear or the title we hold.

Instead, His word is clear: when we accept Christ into our lives as Savior, we take on a new identity and new roles in Him. We become children of God (John 1:12), adopted (Ephesians 1:5), accepted (Romans 15:7), and one in Christ (Galatians 3:28).

Yep, this new identity was a significant change, and quite refreshing to let the latter go. Understanding what God says about us takes us to a new level of hope.

-Before becoming an empty nester, what roles and titles did you look to for your identity?

-What does God’s word say about who you are aside from the roles and titles you’ve lived in?

-Journal what you discover about your true identity in Christ.