"Confirm Your Identity"

     Those words stared back at me a few minutes after I had deactivated my Twitter account for the second time. 

     That's ironic, I thought. How swept up in social media we get, to the point of putting as much effort into our online personas as we do our real-life ones, to the point of almost letting it reign supreme in our thoughts. I don't have a following on social media nor do I post every little thing that happens, but I'm one of (probably) thousands who refreshes Instagram too many times a day and believes the lie that Twitter and Facebook actually have even a sliver of eternal value. 

     They. Don't. They don't. THEY DON'T. It goes without saying that they are idols in my life. Recently I've realized that interaction with people, and even a few people themselves, have become idols to me. Actually, they've been idols for a while and I'm just now realizing it. It's been a long year and a half of being hurt and let down by people, but who had the high expectations in our relationships? It was me, and those expectations were not healthy or right. 

     Loneliness has been a big part of my life in the last year and half, as a result of my self-caused disappointment. I have been lonely and sad as relationships that meant so much to me dwindled away and became less important to others. And while loving people and investing in them is good and right, that is not where our value lies. It's not. 

     When you put so much work and heart into a friendship, you hope and assume that those on the receiving end will do the same. That's where the trouble comes in. As soon as being a friend becomes about what I can get from it, I'm looking at it all wrong. 

     Does that mean that I should treat people well but just expect them to never care about me? Well, no. But it means that I'll be okay if they don't, because my joy and fulfillment is in God, not in feelings of being needed, wanted, or appreciated. 

     It's been so, so hard to live each day like I believe that. Deep in my heart I know it, but it's hard work and lots of prayers to get it to penetrate a hurting heart and fill it with actual hope. 

     And here's the hard truth: we can invest in and love and adore people, but they will not always invest in and love and adore us back. We will sacrifice for people and they will not always sacrifice back. We will pray our hearts out for people and they might not pray their hearts out for us. 

     And that is perfectly okay. If I'm praying for, investing in, and loving people for the purpose of having reciprocal feelings, then I'm doing it for the wrong reason. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for us, the ultimate display of love, and still he was despised and rejected by men. He laid down his life, and did everyone react with gratefulness and adoration? No. His crucifixion was colored by a posture of humble obedience to His Father and genuine, pure love. So should my every action be. 

     I'm not very good at this yet. I would still really love it if people cared as much as I did. But I know that I am not entitled to it, nor do I deserve it. I have the greatest friendship in the world with Jesus, and that should be my priority. As I spend more and more time with Him, I'll ask for grace to love people well with the purest of intentions, and ask for nothing in return but to glorify God in my actions, my words, and my heart towards His children. 

     My identity is NOT in the friendships I have. It's not in what kind of friend I am. It's not in what kind of friends others are to me. It's not in my persona. It's certainly not in an app that has absolutely no long-lasting value. My identity is in God and God alone. I pray for the ability to lay all of these things down. I pray for grace to hold them with a loose grasp and instead hold on tightly to Jesus and His word.