Who told you that you were naked?: What lies are you believing about yourself?

Some time ago, I had a revelation while reading this passage: 

“Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” Genesis 3:11

The question "Who told you that you were naked?" caught my attention, and I kept rereading it over and over. As I sat and pondered that question in my mind, it shifted to, "Who told you that you were unworthy?" "Who told you that you were ugly?" "Who told you you weren't capable?" "Who told you you were a failure?" and so on, hitting at every lie and deception I believed about who I am.

From the beginning, shame was not part of God's design. Shame says, "I am bad." The core of who I am is ugly, bad, or evil. It is a negative self-evaluation. An identity issue.

Adam and Eve hid from the Lord in shame because of their nakedness—nakedness they already shared with God, and one He had declared good in their creation. Their reaction when they perceived they were naked was to sew "...fig leaves together..." and make "...coverings for themselves."

This was a negative evaluation of their nakedness; no longer was their nakedness good, but something to be ashamed of—something to hide and not share. Their nakedness became something they believed they had to withhold from God. It wasn't good enough. It wasn't worthy. So, in their own understanding, they tried to fix it by covering themselves with fig leaves, but even then, it wasn't enough. God killed an animal and covered them with "...garments of skin..." before banishing them from the garden.

The truth is, although they were naked, their nakedness had always been covered by God. God had been their covering. He made complete their weaknesses and inadequacies with Himself. He was their clothing. He was their covering. That was the intimacy they shared—all of Him for all of them.

In eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they rejected God's covering. They rebelled against Him and chose to be their own gods. They didn't understand the weight of what they were choosing when they ate the fruit.

Like all of us, they did not understand the weight of their yeses and nos. We don’t understand how powerful it is to stand firm in the truth of what God has revealed to us, or how strong it is to resist the devil and flee. To reject his lies and deception. How monumental it is to stand in who we are in Christ.

Christ is our gate, our path back into intimacy and fellowship with God. In Christ, God becomes our covering again. What is weak becomes strong, what's unworthy on its own is made worthy once more. What wasn't enough becomes enough. What is lost is found. What was dead is made alive again.

Adam and Eve died; they lost their connection to their only source of life. So was the fate of all humanity until Christ was revealed. A phone without a charger becomes useless. We died.

We lost sight of who we were created to be. We were not built for this world, but for the heavens. We were created to be superheroes on a grand scale. We were created to be image bearers of God. We were created perfect and complete in Jesus.

We were created to be children of God—His family.

We are royalty. We are world-changers. We are overcomers.

You are enough. You are worthy. You are beautiful. You are a good creation!

Like a puzzle piece, we are uniquely crafted with weaknesses and strengths. Each weakness and strength serves a purpose for God. Within each of us, that combination of weaknesses and strengths is good and perfect. The traits you might dislike about yourself were crafted by God.

Maybe you don’t like how you look, but you were designed with this final version in mind. You were crafted with intention.

Maybe you dislike how quiet you are, but even your quietness has a purpose in God.

Maybe you dislike that you were born a boy, but even your gender was part of God's intentional design in you.

You were created with purpose—on purpose.

I am not advocating for sin—anything that goes against God's original design and purpose. You are not your sin. I am advocating for you—the one who is human, imperfectly messy, and perfectly loved.

Each piece of the puzzle plays a role in the full picture, connecting pieces that usually cannot be connected. They act as bridges bringing the whole picture together. No puzzle piece is more important than another, and none less so. Though different, they are equally valuable, regardless of where they are in the puzzle.

So I ask, what lies are you believing about yourself?

Invite God to answer that question, and you will be surprised by what He reveals.

I am on my own journey of discovering who I am. God still tells me I have no idea who I truly am. I am much greater than what I believe. This is just the beginning. 

Rejection is not the weapon I thought it was

 I had this revelation recently that reframed rejection for me. I struggle a lot with the fear of rejection. I have participated heavily with self-rejection and self-abandonment. 

I had this reframe that I believe nullifies rejection in a way for me. I had this realization that people weren't rejecting me because I was unworthy or because I was this 'bad' person. I realized their rejection didn't affect who I am, the core of my identity, but people's rejection of me came from their incapacity of being able to receive and fully understand me. 

There's a toy that parents get for their kids called a Shape Sorting Cube. Children have fun by sorting the various shapes into the corresponding opening in the cube, a square shape into a square opening, a circle shape into a circle opening, etc. If my being were a star, and the person I was hoping to find common ground with had only a cube that didn't have a star-shaped opening for me to fit into, they don't have the capacity to receive me. 

How I understood rejection was that there was something inherently wrong with me for not being a square or circle that could fit into that person's cube. I was wrong, so to fit into that person's cube, I ended up cutting parts of myself into a shape that fit.  Who I was to my core was wrong, it was bad, unworthy, and not enough. Each time I experienced any form of rejection, or anything that might appear as rejection, it would only reinforce this story I was telling myself, that there was something inherently wrong with my existence. 

If who I am was wrong, that meant I couldn't be myself, so from a very young age, I've played many caricatures of myself in the hopes of being chosen and being seen as worth it, as enough. Unaware that I, too, was dealing out rejection wounds to myself. Not only was I suffering from rejection wounds from other people, but I exacerbated those wounds by cutting out those very parts that I internalized to be shameful or bad. 

I am realizing a different truth: the rejection that I experienced had nothing to do with who I am at my core, my identity. I wasn't bad or unworthy or not enough; I wasn't shameful. My existence mattered. Just like it wouldn't be a be-all and end-all type of situation if I tried to fit a square into a circular opening and it didn't fit. The cube being able to sort only certain shapes into it, and the square not being able to fit, was not the problem. I had no right to hate the cube for not being able to accept squares, and I couldn't hate the square for being a square. That was what I did; I hated myself for being rejected. 

The people who rejected me didn't have the capacity or space to receive me. I am not saying this is the case for every situation, but for some it is. It's this deeper understanding that you truly can't please everyone, our finiteness, our limitedness, our uniqueness, make that impossible. That's not bad either, that's a gift, we were created different and unique because it matters, our voices matter, our existence matters. We are all like puzzle pieces, each with our own unique place and position in the full puzzle, not one greater or lesser than the other.

I have gotten so good at playing caricatures of myself. If you asked me who Angelique was, I would be at a loss for words. I do not know who I am. 

I had this realization a couple of years ago on a walk that all along I had been running away from myself all my life. At that time, God was requiring me to come to a halt and meet Angelique. There was this feeling of having to sit down in front of a mirror and come face-to-face with her. All the parts of me I rejected and killed, the parts I had, in hate, cut with such malice of heart. The parts that seemed to me to be filled with shame and unworthiness. But Jesus Loved. 

Jesus loved her with such gentleness and care, whereas I would cast her aside as unworthy, he would pick her up and hold her, and cherish her, and require me to do the same. " What is she worth?" I would sneer in contempt, and " My blood," he would respond. 

I have lost who I am through the many years of self-abandonment, self-rejection, the cutting and shaping, trying to fit into the lives of people I was never meant to fit into. All in vain. Fear of rejection did not serve me; it served the rejection itself. To run away from being rejected, I rejected myself. 

Rejection is not the weapon I thought it was. If a blue whale tried to live on land because it wanted to be human, would it survive? You will not thrive or survive in the places you want to belong if that space wasn't made for you. 

Rejection doesn't define who I am, it doesn't define my worth, it doesn't define what I am capable of, and it has no say. It's just noise.

Rejection doesn't change my worth. If someone rejected gold because they didn't have the knowledge or expertise to recognize gold in its raw form doesn't mean the gold is worthless. Nor is it worth it because someone was able to recognize it. It's just gold; its reception or non-reception doesn't affect its worth.