Been there done that. That’s what I said when I read Tripp’s account of the letter he received from a critic. 12 pages! He never says whether the author put her name on it. Mine was almost 2 pages but anonymous. Yeah, I should have thrown it away. But I didn’t. I read it. Reread it.  Analyzed it. Reread it again. Stewed over it. Tried to figure out who wrote it. Reread it.  Lived and breathed it. Believed it. Until I finally threw it away and freed myself from it and the anonymous critic coward.  I was about 33-34 years old at the time. Fortunately, I can’t remember what it said. But it devastated me. How could anyone think that of me? It wasn’t anything morally; it was petty things. I learned then and there people can be cruel…and cowards.

It did take me years to learn the truth about identity. I am not what people think of me. I am who God thinks of me. As Tripp writes, “There is no need to be paralyzed by the opinions of another. God gives me the ultimate tool of self-assessment, the mirror of the Word.” God’s Word gives me an excellent picture of what God thinks of me. I like the way Jesus puts it in John 16:32: “Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.”

My identity is not based on what others think or write or say. The Word says God will never turn His back on me. And that is all that matters.

“Thank you, Father, that I matter to you. Your opinion of me is really all that matters. My worth, my value, is not based on others, nor my own righteousness, it is grounded in you. Thank you that I matter to you and you will never turn your back on me.”