(Guest post by Gina Fonseca – one of our prized BIG Mama leaders in BIG Life Mentoring.)
I am 5’3” tall (on my tippy toes).
I am a brown haired, green eyed girl.
I am a medium build 150ish pounds.
I am 40 years old.
I am Gina.
Those are all absolutely true facts about me, and that’s probably a good enough description for a line up, but it tells you absolutely nothing about me…
About who I really AM.
Those I am’s will tell you what I look like, but they don’t tell you what I love, what I dream about, what I aspire to be, what makes me happy or holy balls excited. And those are the I AM’s that really matter.
But that’s not the whole story either. Because we’ve got all kinds of other I am’s floating through our heads and speech every day don’t we…
I am overweight.
I am depressed.
I am exhausted.
I am angry.
I am miserable.
I am broke.
I am sick.
I am unloved.
I am just DONE.
Any of these ring a bell?
So…what do these I am’s say about you? Who is the girl we would know based on these I am’s? Well she’d be the little life version of you. The you that’s bought into the old “This is me. This is who I am. This who I’ll always be.” Really? That’s it? For the rest of your life?
What are you, a rock? You weren’t meant to be stuck in one I am.
NO girl…you are not any of those things. Those are words that may describe your feelings or your experience right now, but that’s not WHO YOU ARE. You are trading in your long term for your right now.
You’re trading who you are for how you feel.
God’s word gives us a perfect example of this little life in Sarai. She was a broken woman. A woman who’d gotten old and failed at the most important thing for a woman of her time; she was barren. I’m sure she’d say “I am a broken, useless, barren woman.” But that’s not what God wanted for her and it’s not what He wants for us. God gave her a new name, Sarah (meaning Princess), and with this new name He radically changed her I AM. She became a princess, a child of God and blessed by Him with a child.
That is what He wants for us.
We need to stop defining who we are by our circumstances and start defining who we are by the greatness we have inside us.
Only a Big Life I AM will tell us who you truly are and the world needs you to be who you were truly meant to be.
So, here’s the most important sentence you’ll ever finish:
