I[nsecuri]dentity

I love shoes! I think they are the PERFECT accessory. You can take the most casual outfit and make it look like a million bucks if you are wearing the right shoes! I've jokingly said at times that one of my goals in life is to have the best shoe collection of any pastor's wife in the world! The more I think about it though, it might not be a joke! I think there is a real part of me that wants to have better shoes than any other pastor's wife-it makes me feel like I'm breaking some stereotype of the non-stylish preacher's wife or something. Taking it a step further, I love when my husband and I get to say we are a pastor and a lawyer- the "spirit of the law and the letter of the law" so to speak. It makes me feel different. It makes me feel like I don't fit some "mold." On another part of the spectrum you have people who make it their life ambition to fit into some "mold." In my current phase of life I see this occur primarily with getting married and having babies. I come across way too many women who can't seem to find their self-worth apart from a husband or a baby! Right about now I could stand on my soapbox and start talking about how husbands and babies won't fulfill you (I have a laundry list of more comments), but I can't do that until I include something else after husbands and babies...shoes! Actually-I need to add one more thing to that-career! Clearly I "get something" out of the fact that I can say "I'm a lawyer, my husband's a pastor, yeah what a strange combo, and by the way-look at my fabulous shoes." It's just another way of saying "look at me, I'm married and have a baby-I appear have the perfect life, lucky me." With whichever statement you make, whether out loud or in your head, you are saying that you want people to look at you and what you have...you are looking to derive your worth and security from these ideas and things. There is no point in trying to lie to yourself about it, because we are all sinful-we are absolutely imperfect, so there is no possible way you can have 100% pure motives in anything! Sure you can have more good motives than bad, but our sin will always be in the way to some extent! Some people look for acceptance through family, and some look for acceptance through career or other things like shoes. I think we have to try to remember that all of our hearts are in exactly the same place- the outflow just manifests itself differently for each person. It's just insecurity masked by different "identities." Recognizing that our hearts are all on the same level (i.e. sinful) as everyone else is extremely difficult-I know it's difficult because I'm really really resisting the urge to justify why the things I find my identity in are "less bad" than wherever you find yours! No matter how much I think my "i[nsecuri]dentity is less of a problem or less sinful than yours-I'm just not going to write about it!