I’ve been thinking and praying a great deal this week about identity. I’ve asked myself if I truly understand my identity in this world. Trying to grasp what it really means to be a child of God and what that looks like in practical, day to day choices, has felt like a super tall order. What I know for sure is being a daughter of God is the only identity that matters.

Over the last couple of weeks, my husband and I have been watching the Marvel movies in chronological order. We wanted to gain an understanding of the whole story, as it all was very jumbled and lacked a foundation to hold the whole story together.

What we learned in doing this is how much value there is to having a story told from the beginning… it added a great deal of context to each movie. I also learned it’s very similar to the difference between our perspective on life and that of the Father.

He knows each of our stories from the very beginning, He sees how they connect and what part each and every story has to play in the world. When we rely on His guidance and make our choices accordingly, we can be sure each story will fulfill its purpose in the grand design.

Watching each superhero story, the biggest challenge I saw each hero face was reconciling who they believed they were with who they were called to be. Each, in their call to greatness, suffered great loss, pain, and confusion. They faced many dark temptations, sometimes falling off the right path as a result.

They faced conflict with one another, confusion about which path was the path of true righteousness, and fear of not living up to the challenges they were called to face. What I saw in those movies was a correlation between the path of those fictional heroes and the path of every human on earth.

We are all striving to understand who we think we are and reconcile that with who God made us to be. When we make pronouncements on how and where we will serve God, we are telling Him we know better about how to use our gifts than He does. We are telling Him we see more of the big picture than He does.

Throughout the Avenger’s saga, you see people from all walks of life called to new gifts, then called to use them in facing challenges far beyond anything they could have imagined. No matter when, where, or how their gifts came to be, each one had to make a choice regarding how to use those gifts, or even if they were going to be used at all.

When they worked as a team, using their gifts as part of a greater whole, their gifts would grow and multiply, and in the end, they would prevail. However, even in prevailing, there was always a worldly cost.

Learning to let God dictate how and when we use the gifts He gave us is key to using them most effectively. We don’t have enough of our whole storyline to know where and how we will be most useful. We may believe our greatest impact is through our worldly identities, but that’s not true. When we try to place boundaries on how we use our gifts, we are limiting opportunities to use them as God intends.

I’ve seen so many people, myself included, invest a great deal of feelings about self-worth on worldly successes and failures. We buy into the notion that true joy will be found in stable life circumstances. Unfortunately, there’s really no such thing. It’s an illusion. It’s scary to think how many of us pin our peace and happiness on an illusion.

I read something this morning that I really needed to hear. “Sometimes God calms the storm. Sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child.” We can’t allow doubt to take away our faith that, whether He chooses to calm the storm or calm us, He will always do one or the other. When He chooses to let the storm rage and we refuse to be calmed, it’s because we are choosing to keep our focus on the storm instead of Him.

I’ve written a good bit lately about the challenges I faced early in life. Needless to say, there have been a great deal more since then, but over the last two years I’ve watched God do a complete overhaul on my life. He has taken every misstep, every hurt, every fall, every joy, and is using it for purposes I never could have seen coming.

Up until a few years ago, I thought I knew who I was. I thought I had a handle on things. I thought I knew the path I was supposed to follow. Then God brought me a sister who began to help me see that I wasn’t following God’s path…I was hiding from it.

Since then, I’ve learned that my past, including any and all of my mistakes, are part of what has gotten me here, to the life I now know I was born to live. It’s not the life I saw coming, nor is it a life I would have believed possible for me… yet here I am.

I pray every day for God to use me as He sees fit. I pray for guidance and wisdom to see when I’m trying to place my own agenda over the top of His. I’m learning not to worry about trusting people in my life to be there when I need them, but instead trust that if/when I find myself without them, I’ll still be ok.

I’m learning that my chosen life circumstances aren’t the only way I can serve God. I’m learning that it’s not for ME to determine when, where, or how I can serve, but instead to serve where, when, and how God needs me. I’m not who I am because of the person I married, the job I do, or the hobbies I cultivate. I am who I am because I am God’s.

He will provide opportunities to serve Him all day every day, but we can only show up for them if we take our focus off of our own agendas and step out from behind our own walls. We may not be superheroes, but in my opinion, being a child of God is a much bigger calling.

It wasn’t the gifts they had that made those superheroes special, but how they chose to use them. It wasn’t their strength, power, money, intellect, or great acts of bravery that made them special. It was their hearts and their spirits. It was how they allowed their history to give them wisdom, yet not allow it to hold them back.

I read a story a while back about the retirement story of a school janitor. This is a man who took the space he occupied in the world and used it to bring glory to God. For years he showed up to work, did his job, and gave his time and attention to as many students as he could.

He didn’t fret about whether or not he was planted in the right place to make a difference. He chose to make a difference in the place he was planted. The retirement send off he received from the students of that school was beautiful. It was a visual representation of the enormous impact one follower of God can have, simply using the opportunity he was given to bring love and grace to the world.

Don’t tell God where and how to use you… choose to be used everywhere you are planted. Most of all, never underestimate the power of being exactly who you are… it is that very thing that makes each of us capable of tapping into the true power, peace, and protection of the Lord.