My five-year old has taken up a renewed interest in the Barbie movies she got when she was three. My house is filled with the sound of Barbie with her puppies or Barbie as a mermaid or Barbie in fairy wings. My little one sings along as Barbie plays a different character who is always the same: kind and loyal, but timid and discouraged, wondering for what she is meant, only to be given a mission in which she finds she is far more beautiful, gifted and dignified than she ever thought.
I imagine that every kid dreams of this kind of storyline for themselves too – with or without puppies, mermaid tails or fairy wings – as he or she wonders who he or she really is and what he or she is going to do in life.
And then there are older kids like me with the same questions.
I write about it today because the start of a new year is often a time of reflection. Who are you, where do you think you are going, and where do you want to be next year? If you are Barbie, you’ll find the answer within yourself because “you have to be you” and “you can do whatever you set your mind to” and “you have to listen to your heart.”
If you’re a Christian, you’ll ask the Lord who He made you to be and ask what He wants you to do and listen to His heart.
A priest was talking to me and others recently about the blessing of identity and mission – who God made you to be and what He wants you to do. He said it was something Joseph and Mary did for Jesus, as did the Father at the Baptism in the Jordan and in the Transfiguration. And I was intrigued by the idea of blessing someone and being blessed to find God’s assured and unique will.
He taught the blessing as simply, “I believe you can be the person God made you to be, and I believe that you can accomplish the mission that God has for you.”
Since then, I have pulled my husband and my five- and 11-year old girls together for a nightly prayer service, having each of us bless each other in those ways. It has been sweet time of bonding for parents to bless children, children to bless parents and spouse to bless spouse.
And for me, it has been rich internally. I felt a kind of freedom through the blessing to be the person God wants me to be, having received my family’s “permission,” and I felt encouraged to listen more deeply to His plans for my mission. As I blessed them, I felt an excitement of wanting to know them in an even deeper way – the way God sees them, not just how I see them. I am excited to know what they are “for.”
Our identities begin at beloved sons and daughters of a Heavenly Father. At the core of ourselves, we are loved, we belong, and we are not our own. We are the created, precious ones of a God who imagined and invented us. As my 11-year old begins to enter that age in which people question “who they are,” it’s refreshing to tell her the actual answer and that she neither has to define herself, nor take on what anyone else tells her.
Each of us is the beloved son or daughter of the Father, and each also has a unique and unrepeatable identity. It takes prayer to hear what it is, but my daughter and each of us can be assured that we are good, holy and necessary.
Each of us has a mission from God to accomplish. I blessed my children with consideration of their missions in a future vocation to the married, single or religious life. But I also blessed their more immediate missions of the upcoming science project and further exploration of Montessori number rods. My husband has a mission today of going to work and I have a mission today of…well, probably laundry. I still need that blessing to follow through!
There are short-term missions that pass. One mission ends, and another begins. There are others that build on the next. When my children grumble they don’t want to go back to school this week, I can bless them in this immediate mission and say we can thank God school will prepare for the mission He has in the long-term.
The Lord knows well the plans He has for us (Jeremiah 29:11). Some plans we know, and some are being unfolded. In that waiting, we sometimes worry. We worry we might miss the call. We worry we won’t be able to do it. And we worry we aren’t sure how to prepare. But now I have a gift to think that one day, my husband, my girls and I will be called, and we will be ready, filled with the encouragement of many blessings given before.
And on that day, sort of like Barbie in her movies, we’ll find that we were created more beautifully, are more gifted and have more dignity than we could have imagined.
As my reader, I give you my blessing today too – that I believe you can be the person God created you to be and that I believe you can accomplish the mission God has for you – today, this year and in the future. Let my blessing and God’s blessing encourage you this year. Bless your children, your spouses and give me your blessing too.
Proverbs 12:25 – An anxious heart is heavy, but a kind word gives it joy.
