By Jessica Brodie

Have you ever experienced a life change that turned your whole world upside down, and even though you knew it was coming, it still managed to catch you completely off guard?

This week I officially became an empty-nester, sending my youngest daughter—the only one still living at home full-time—off to college. We have one other child left, my stepson. But as we only get him every other weekend, and as he’s an old soul at seventeen who’s somehow been self-sufficient for a decade, that’s it. My daily identity as “Mom,” caregiver, nest-tender, comforter, nurturer, One With All the Answers … all that’s over.

I’m under no illusions my work as a parent is done. My kids still love and need their mom, and at least in the case of my youngest daughter, she’ll be home on break all four years of college (her school requires all students to live in dorms, no apartments). And I am certain, not terribly long from now, they’ll have kids of their own.

But things are going to be very different now. It’ll just be me and my husband here most days. If I don’t feel like cooking or tending to anyone, I know he’ll pick up the slack. The pressure is off—the responsibilities are over. Part of me celebrates that.

Yet suddenly I find myself wondering who in the world I am if I’m not someone’s mom.

Someone’s wife.

Someone’s daughter.

Someone’s employee, and someone’s boss.

I’ve realized that somewhere along the way, I’ve let worldly roles define my identity, and now I’m feeling lost. Adrift. Uncentered.

My head knows the truth: I’m so much more than any of that. Before I was mom, wife, daughter, employee, or boss, I belonged to the Lord. My sole purpose was to glorify him, to love him and live in perfect, beautiful connection with him.

Perhaps over the years, as I’ve entrenched myself in my other roles on this earth, I’ve allowed myself to get too caught up in that—to the point that I’m teetering on idolatry masked as parental love.

That was one of the lessons with Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, was it not? To help Abraham know that, as much as he loved his son Isaac, he needed to love God more and live in total faith?

Many of us know the story; if you don’t, it tells how Abraham, having waited until his old age for a son by his beloved wife, Sarah, was enamored with the child, Isaac. Yet one day the Bible tells us the Lord tested Abraham, calling him to take Isaac to the top of a mountain and sacrifice him there. Abraham complied, loading up his donkey for the journey. Atop the mountain, just as he raised the knife to sacrifice his son, God stopped him and provided a ram in Isaac’s place.

As Genesis 22:11-12 tells us, “The angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son’” (NIV).

When God saw Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, Abraham passed the test.

In the Ten Commandments, God orders us to have no other gods before him, declaring, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5).

In all my years being caregiver, nest-tender, comforter, and nurturer, wasn’t that what I was doing? Slowly replacing my role as God’s own with other, lesser roles?

This isn’t to say I should have loved my kids less or shirked my responsibilities. God calls me to this work and task as surely as he calls me to my writing ministry and to evangelism.

But somewhere along the way, I let the lines get too blurry, as evidenced by the identity crisis now before me.

And it’s time for me to reconnect with my true role: God’s beloved, born again through Jesus Christ into his heavenly family forevermore.

This lesson isn’t only for me, my friends. It’s not only for parents struggling to figure out who they are again when their children leave home. It’s for anyone going through a major life change—a job loss. A major move or health crisis. The loss of a spouse, whether to death or divorce. The loss of a parent or sibling.

No matter how much we love the people in our lives, no matter how good and godly are the roles we fulfill, at the end of it all, one thing is most important: our relationship with the Lord.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He was there when we took our first breath—indeed, he is the one who put breath into our lungs. And he’ll be there at the end of our earthly days, ushering our souls into eternity.

That is the most important thing.

Our roles shift and evolve throughout our lives. But God is steady and true—the only one we can count on. He is the “Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).

I miss my daughter immensely, but in my heart I know the truth: My identity is far more than mom, wife, or any earthly title I claim.

I am the Lord’s. Forevermore.

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