Last week I finished the series on Family Predators and left Friday hanging with a post asking, “What is Your Name?” In that post I said, “Your name isn’t what people call you. Your name is what you live into. What is your name?”

In that moment I was thinking of my name and the names I have accepted at different times, names people gave me. Granted, not all of them were official names, but they were all things that impacted my identity and influenced how I treated myself.

For instance, my mother’s family did not value girls. My grandmother was known for giving no value to her daughters or granddaughters while treating her son and grandsons like kings. My mother learned that mindset and more than once made the statements that she couldn’t believe “God would curse me with a girl,” or she would wonder out loud “what I did that was so bad that God cursed me with you.” So my “name” that my mother gave me was “A Curse.”

My father was not quite on that level, but he did tell me on a few occasions, “I never wanted kids, but since you were here, I decided to love you.” Wow. That’s nice. So my “names” from my father included “Not Wanted” and “Tolerated” among others in that mindset.

When I married my husband, it quickly became clear that I wasn’t really what he wanted in life. As a wife who cooked, cleaned house, took care of the kids, I was everything he was looking for. Unfortunately, what he was really look for was everything he had wanted from his mom. However, as a partner and someone he wanted to share life with, I wasn’t what he wanted. In the most honest conversation we had in our 22 years of dating and marriage, which we had the night he asked for a divorce as soon as I was ready, he told me, “I didn’t love anyone I dated more than anyone else. I wanted someone to be at home when I got home. I wanted to get married, and you said yes.” For 19 years of marriage, my husband gave me the name “Settled For.”

Now, I want you to look at three key sentences.
“So my ‘name’ my mother gave me…”
“So my ‘names’ from my father included…”
“…My husband gave me the name…”

Look at the people and the verbs.
My mother, my father, my husband.
Gave.

When I was growing up, I didn’t realize the impact of my parents’ words or behavior. I didn’t realize that I was always trying to be enough in order to make them love me. I didn’t realize that I was trying to be a good enough student to make them love me. I didn’t realize I became independent because I couldn’t depend on them to love me. I didn’t realize I was “living out of” those names. Those names influenced my behavior in incredibly self-harming and self-sabotaging ways.

Then I married someone who didn’t really want me either, and I lived out of that for nineteen years trying to be enough to make him happy, to make him want to spend time with me, to make him enjoy me…to make him actually choose me. By the time he moved out, he found out the truth of settling for someone who is “good enough”, which is they really aren’t and never will be because you never saw them as good in the first place. You saw them as tolerable, and it is a very short trip from being “tolerable” to not being wanted. And that will give a person a whole slew of names they don’t want to drag around their whole life.

So I didn’t.

When my husband moved out, his actions identified me in a lot of ways. The ease with which he left told me I wasn’t valuable or worth the effort. The fact he was involved with someone else told me I wasn’t desirable or fulfilling as a wife. When he told me he was never happy with us, he told me I wasn’t enough. His words and actions gave me a lot with which I could identify myself, but I refused to accept those names or identities.

I didn’t believe he had the right to tell me who I was. I didn’t believe any person had the right to tell me who I was instead. I believed God is the only one with that right.

Only the God who created me
has the right to determine my identity.

So, I asked the Lord to show me every name given to me that was never His idea…and then tell me how he identifies me

My mother saw a curse. God created me to be a blessing.
My dad tolerated me. God created me on purpose
My husband settled for me. God created me with intentionality.
I was never good enough for the people who didn’t really want me. God created me to be everything I need to be to fulfill my purpose.
My husband didn’t find a relationship with me fulfilling. God desires time with me.
As a tolerated curse that was settled for, I didn’t have value, but God sent His Son to die for me because to Him, I am priceless.
Others told me I am not worth the effort, but God has fought for me over and over.

People told me how I wasn’t what they wanted.
God created me to be exactly what He wanted.

I could identify as all the devaluing ways people have treated me or the destructive things they have said to me, but I don’t.

I identify as “Jerri, Beloved Daughter of the Most High God” because that is who I am created to be, and only the God who created me has the right to tell me who I am.

So I ask you again.

What is your name?

Jerri Kelley is the Sassy, Headstrong, and somehow still Beloved Daughter of the Most High God. She lived a lot of years under a false identity believing what broken people told her she was, and now, she not only wants to live the Truth of who God says she is, she wants to empower others to see who the really are and live that huge.