I have spent most of my life wanting to know who I am. I grew up in a typical small, middle-class family. I grew up not being around other family. My parents moved so that my Dad could attend a PhD program in another state – a state that was 4 states over from where they grew up. I grew up with my Mom writing letters weekly family, both her family and my Dad’s family. They were connected in such a way that I was a little jealous. They had a history between them that I could never have.

Identity is such a personal thing. Some people claim identity with certain religious groups. For some, identity is simply acceptance in their peer group. For me, identity was, and is, my heredity. Who were my grandparents? Who were their parents? What were their struggles in life? Who did they vote for for President and why? What were their family traditions growing up? Were there other languages spoken in their home? Ultimately what countries did they come from? What nationalities make up my family?

It is difficult, at best, to answer these questions when you can’t form a dialogue with the people who you are interested in. To be sure I had some wonderful conversations with my grand-parents about times when they were growing up, and I am even privileged to have known my great-grandmother really well – she passed away when I was 26. Unfortunately their stories were presented as stories, little anecdotes that were told about a past and time long gone. Even with the abundance of stories there still seemed to be something lacking. Connection? Community? I’ve not quite put my finger on it exactly.

Part of my mystery was solved a few years ago. My grandmother, Mam-ma (it’s a southern name, I can’t explain), voluntarily placed herself into a nursing home in late 1998. After nearly 2 years of her house standing vacant, my Mom, Aunt and I decided that we needed to sell the house. Before we could do that we needed to clean the house. How do you clean a house that has 70+ years of collected stuff? Answer: spend several weeks wallowing in it.

It was amongst said stuff that I discovered a picture of my grandfather and my Mom’s biological mother, Kathleen. Kathleen died when my Mom was six, so I (obviously) never met her. My grandfather, Pap-pa, remarried soon after and they had a child soon after that (my Aunt mentioned above). Pap-pa’s second wife is my Mam-ma. She was my grandmother for all intents and purposes. I’ve always known that she was not my “biological” grandmother, but there was never any discontinuity with how we were treated, and so the notion of having a “step-grandmother” never really entered into the equation.

But I digress. The picture of Pap-pa and Kathleen is a black-and-white that has been colorized and they both look really young and beautiful in the photo. I asked my mom if I could have the picture and she said yes. Now at this time, summer of 2000, I already had the sense that I would be moving soon and so I never unpacked that photo from its box. When I finally did unpack it, in the summer of 2003, I discovered a part of me that I never knew I had. What I discovered is that I look like Kathleen. I have her smile. We are connected in a way that I had never thought of before. And for some reason this little discovery has partly answered the question of who I am. I have discovered part of my identity. I belong to Kathleen.

Now this discovery does not answer all my questions, by any means. But it has begun a thought process in me that I’ve been mulling over for several years. What the picture did for me was place the question of identity at the top of the list of things to think about. Here’s where I am currently.

I can imagine that some people feel this way when they come to Christ and are accepted into the eternal and ginormous family of God. I can well imagine that some people have no family, or their family is estranged. Perhaps they want to forget about their family and are running from a bad past. But here’s the thing. By becoming a Christian, we gain identity. No longer are we “that” person’s son/daughter/wife/husband. We are the chosen children of God. We matter to Him more than any earthly being could claim. We are all connected. We are loved. And, best of all, we can identify ourselves with the creator of the universe. No more floating around identity-less. Our identity is in Christ.