It was a big change. After years of financial struggles, the church where I was working as music pastor merged with a giant church nearby. My heavy responsibilities of leading a small team to plan, produce, and perform at the weekend services morphed to light responsibilities of mainly singing and playing at the services as a member of a huge team. The performing side was what I enjoyed the most, so I was excited about my new role. The leadership of the church that enfolded us could not have been more gracious and welcoming, and I felt appreciated and valued. I was reveling in my significantly reduced stress level.
Over time however, I began to notice something happening inside of me. I felt a sense of discontentment and hurt, loss and confusion. I couldn’t figure out where these feelings were coming from. I wrestled with God, read widely, and talked with both my wife and my accountability partner, all in an attempt to understand what I going through.
As the months went by, I started to get greater clarity on the source of my feelings. In short, I was having an identity crisis. I realized that for the previous twenty years as a music pastor in multiple churches, I’d always been the right hand person for the lead pastor. I was consulted on every big decision the church was facing and led the organization’s most highly visible program. In my new role, I was just one of a long list of worship leaders, many layers away from the church leadership, and a full decade older than anyone else in our young music department staff. My influence, my role, and my importance rightly and necessarily diminished, not only in the overall church, but within the music team itself. While I welcomed the decrease in stress and responsibility, I was having a hard time letting go of my former status.
It was a humbling realization. I had always prided myself on not basing my identity or self-worth on my job, on what I did or accomplished. This role change, and the feelings that came from it, forced me to take a hard, honest look at myself. I had to face the reality that my job was a bigger part of my self-perception than I’d wanted to admit. I needed to work through the difficult process of reshaping my identity.
One Sunday morning during this season, I gathered with the other musicians and tech crew as usual before the services started. We had a tradition that one of us would take a few minutes to share something we were learning to help us get our minds and hearts in the right place before leading others. The person speaking that day talked about a prayer he’d found called The Litany of Humility written by Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930), who served as Secretary of State for Pope Saint Pius X. It goes like this:
O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved…
From the desire of being extolled…
From the desire of being honored…
From the desire of being praised…
From the desire of being preferred to others…
From the desire of being consulted…
From the desire of being approved, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised…
From the fear of suffering rebukes…
From the fear of being calumniated…
From the fear of being forgotten…
From the fear of being ridiculed…
From the fear of being wronged…
From the fear of being suspected, deliver me, Jesus.
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I…
That, in the opinion of the world,
Others may increase and I may decrease…
That others may be chosen and I set aside…
That others may be praised and I unnoticed…
That others may be preferred to me in everything…
That others may become holier than I,
Provided that I become as holy as I should,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
There are moments when you discover something that you know is exactly what you needed. Hearing this prayer was one of those times for me. I’d been given a tool to help me reshape my perspective, my attitude, and my identity. I fervently prayed The Litany of Humility nearly every day for months. It became like a surgeon’s blade, cutting away the cancerous, infected parts of my identity.
It was a painful, yet wonderful process. As the old layers of False Self dropped away, I found a new clarity on who I was, a deeper sense of my True Self. I learned to rebuild on the most solid foundation I know by defining my ultimate identity as this: I am God’s child. That provides me with a sense of self that won’t be shaken no matter how my job titles, relationships, health, wealth, abilities, opportunities, circumstances, or the opinions of others may change over the course of my life. Working my way to that realization has given me a deep sense of freedom, peace, and joy.
That experience was one of the catalysts that led me to start this blog. So many writers have helped me on my personal development journey, serving as guides in my search for my true identity. I want you to find that help for your own journey. If anything I share here can somehow shine a little light on your path, give you some encouragement or a tool to find your True Self, then my efforts will be worthwhile.
So how about you? How do you answer what many call life’s biggest question – who am I? On what do you base your ultimate identity? What false identities do you need to let go of? Do the work. Peel back the layers of your heart. Use The Litany of Humility or something else that’s a better fit for you. Share your struggle with those you trust. Dig deep. If you do, you’ll take another huge step toward Becoming Yourself.
For more on finding your identity, see my earlier post here.
My wife Lisa and I are recent empty nesters. We’re in our late 40s and live near Phoenix, AZ. Our son Kilian graduated college last year and is living on his own as a graphic designer in California. Our daughter Kennedy is a senior in college in Pittsburgh with plans to move to New York City after graduation to continue her acting career. For years Lisa and I have dreamed of pursuing our love of travel once the kids were on their own. Now that they are, and thanks to Lisa’s job as a successful 
But, until recently, something was holding us back – my job. As a music pastor on staff at a church, something I’ve done for 25 years, I needed to be in town most of the time for meetings, rehearsals and weekend services. That made the kind of travel we wanted to do impossible. I also had a growing itch, what I would even say was a sense of calling from God, to pursue writing, something I’ve had a passion for since I was a kid but never chased after. My job, in that form, was preventing us from pursuing those dreams. I knew that but I couldn’t let it go.
I was pinned and I knew it. So I did what any mature, intellectually honest adult would do: I backpedalled. I rationalized. I made excuses. She patiently listened to me for an hour as I threw up my meager defenses and slogged through my conflicted feelings. Then I finally got clarity on my hesitation to do this thing we’ve both dreamed of for so long – I was afraid of letting go. I said I was afraid of the financial impact (reality – thanks to her career, we had the margin). I said I was afraid of not doing meaningful work (reality – I could still do music for the church at a reduced rate and start writing). I said I was afraid of losing the relationships I had with the people I work with (reality – I could still see those friends on the weekends and attend meetings when I chose to). But really it came down to me being afraid of letting go. Of letting go of something that had been meaningful, comfortable and a big part of my identity for so long.
After that conversation, and a little more processing and prayer, I went in and spoke to my boss. I explained where I was at and what I wanted to do – move from a staff role to an independent contractor, cut the number of weekends per year I was on stage in half and no longer attend meetings. He could not have been more understanding and supportive. He said he could make it work. I walked out of that meeting feeling like an elephant had stopped hitching a ride on my shoulders. I was unbelievably excited about the future and the question that kept blazing through my mind was “Why I did I wait so long to let go?”
So I’m on a new adventure. With the time I’ve saved since my job status change this past July, I’ve started this blog and am working on a novel. As I write this, Lisa and I are sitting in an Airbnb in California on a three week trip to visit our son, escape the Phoenix heat and write. I am LOVING my new life!