identity crisis.

23 Jan 2012 10 Comments

by mary kathryn tyson in encouragement for the journey, life abundant.

when i was a freshman in high school, i was proud to be so widely-recognized as ‘molly’s little sister‘. she was a gregarious senior whom everyone loved and i secretly wanted to be her, so i never minded the association, despite my best efforts to act like i didn’t care at all.

sarah hope and i are only separated by 18 months, so when she arrived to my high school two years later, we shared the same friends and i was ‘sarah’s sister’. (she is much taller than i so she is not my ‘little’ sister and i looked then as i do now like i’m twelve, so no one automatically guesses that i’m her ‘older’ one; therefore, i was merely ‘sarah’s sister’.)

corporately, we have always been known as ‘the tyson girls’. we are all in our thirties now, no longer girls at all. molly has a new last name. and we are still called ‘the tyson girls’.

now, don’t let me fool you. i had my own identity, too. at the time, my hometown had only a handful of elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school. those of us from ‘old chapel hill’ all knew each other. (we still do.) i didn’t belong to one single ‘group’, i managed to belong to everyone. i went from being a cheerleader my first year to leading a vocal ensemble my last and i had friends in every crowd. i was ‘mary tyson’ then.

i established myself in college in both the music and theatre departments and later in the art program. i was also a resident assistant for three years. it was easy to feel famous at a small women’s college where the entire population was smaller than my senior class in high school. it was the first time in life i wasn’t molly or sarah’s sister. i was, simply, ‘mary kathryn’.

i introduced myself recently to someone who would remember me as ‘tom & anne’s daughter’.

still, throughout my life i have mostly identified as (one of) ‘tommy tyson‘s granddaughter(s)’. his name still precedes me in certain settings. i was welcome wherever he was, and he had favor wherever he went. even now, just being a ‘tyson’ with no association to anyone in particular is sufficient. i am proud to be part of this legacy.

i worked for my family’s ministry after my granddad died. for four years, i woke up each day knowing that people who walked through the doors of our conference center would know my name. even under new ownership, mine was the face folks recognized.

and they were welcome, just as they had been every day for the previous 30 years by someone else who bore the same last name i had.

i was in the middle of packing up and purging thirty years of my family’s history and moving it out of our farmhouse four years ago this month.

in about two weeks, i would wave off the last moving truck and throw one final bag in the back of my suv. i would leave my keys in the mailbox by the back door and roll down the driveway one last time.

and i would head to a town where few knew my first name, much less my last.

and no one recognized my face.

no one really knew i was there at all.

i was neither mary or mary kathryn tyson or tom & anne’s daughter or molly or sarah’s sister or tommy’s granddaughter. i was yet all of these, but not to anyone in my new town.

the associations with which i had most identified throughout my life had vanished entirely.

apart from these, i felt i had no identity of my own.

(you might guess that this was the onset of my last descent down the hole, even though it was only one of several circumstances surrounding that season of my depression.)

and it was during this season, slowly but surely, when i was stripped bare and thought i was unknown that the lord of my heart so clearly spoke his definition over me as:

mary kathryn, child of god.

time and again i would hear during this time, ‘is this enough for you? can this be enough for you? let this be enough for you.’

while my relationships are a part of who i am, and i am proud of my family name, i walked through a period of time when this had to become enough for me. rather, i had to understand that this identity alone made me enough. 

being a tyson or hailing from a family full of ministers or being anyone’s sister or daughter or being recognized as a big fish in a little pond isn’t at all my definition. before i was born any of these, before becoming anyone’s wife or someone’s mother, i was created a christ-child in the image of my father. these pieces of me grow dim in the light of the knowledge and understanding that bearing the name of christ is the only i identity worth having. if i bear no other name, this is the only one i need.

just as i am, it is enough for me to be known only as

mary kathryn, child of god.

i know now as he taught me then, this is enough for me.

i am, fully and completely and only

mary kathryn, child of god.

and you, friend, are enough just as you are, too. your identity is not being his daughter or her friend or being a famous worship leader or well-known writer.

you are, simply:

beloved, child of god.

and this is enough for you.

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