I love brains - so much, in fact, that I went to university for four years to do a degree in neuroscience (the study of the brain and nervous system) three years studying for a PhD in neurodegenerative disease and then six years after that doing postdoc work. I had my career all planned out.

I knew the steps I needed to take in order to get to where I wanted.

But then God decided to interrupt my plan. He decided I needed a bit of an identity makeover.

I felt Him ask me to give up my work and all that I had invested in academically so that I could raise my family.

Change of Course

I found it very difficult. This was not the way things were supposed to go!

But I obeyed because I felt strongly that this was what God wanted. All my work colleagues thought I was crazy - I was committing ‘career suicide’ and they just couldn’t understand how I could invest so many years into my work only to hand it over to someone else... who would end up getting a lot of the credit for it! But God knew what He was doing. I thought it was all for the sake of my children and my husband. But what I realise now was that it was as much for my sake as for theirs. ‘Work’ in me needed to be done!

Time for new clothes

Over the past 10 years at home, God has showed me that I was wearing the wrong clothes and needed to be re-dressed. In order to do this, He needed to take away everything that had become apart of my identity, that shouldn’t have been. “Once you were known as “Dr. Goodman”, but now you will commonly be known as “Fin and Rafe's mother” and “Daniel’s wife”.

Many won’t know your name, but I will, and that’s what matters. Most people won’t know you have a degree or a PhD and that doesn’t matter, because I qualify you, not your qualifications. You will carry out what in society are the lowest paid jobs, but you won’t even get paid, because I want you to realise that how much you earn does not dictate your worth, I do. Many of the things that you will do will go unnoticed and be unseen, but I want you to know that I see you, and that’s what’s important. I want you to serve and to do it for me, an audience of one. Become a servant, just as I was. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve." Mark 10:45

"Many won’t know your name, but I will, and that’s what matters"

Strong Foundations

And it was true. All of those things happened. And it has been hard work. But serving in the hiddenplaces has changed me. I have now been re-clothed in the truth of who I really am and who I’m living for. My identity is first and foremost a child of God. Wherever I go and whatever I do, whether it’s in public or private, it’s His approval that I’m living for. I know that my Father defines my worth and my value, not my performance. I don’t need to strive and sweat to earn my way to His acceptance, I just need to rest in the beautiful grace of the identity that He has freely and undeservedly given me; I am a daughter of the most High God.

So, my question to you is what clothes are you wearing?

Is it time to take off the old and put on the new?

How easy do you find it to live from your heavenly daughterhood?

Such helpful questions for Anna to leave us with…

Many of us will know those kind of curveballs. The path we’re headed down changing. Or things we’ve trained for not being realised the way we’d imagined.

The most important lesson of all is to recognise that in EVERY and ALL situations you are daughter first.

When you have this settled it’s so much easier to live free!

Our next devotional is all about helping you to get secure your identity as a daughter. Maybe you’ve known it and need reminding. Perhaps you’ve never known what it really means to live that way.

Either way, we’d love you to join as we go deeper into exploring identity.

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Can’t wait to go on this journey together!