My Los Angeles-Induced Identity Crisis

I've spent the last two years of my life re-building my identity, so after 10 minutes on the phone with one of my mentors/close friends yesterday, I was a little confused and almost offended when she told me I was in the middle of an identity crisis. A word of advice? Look up definitions before you get offended.

What is Identity?

1. The individual characteristics by which a person is recognized.

2. The condition of being oneself and not another.

3. The state of remaining the same, as under varying aspects or conditions.

So there you have it. Your identity must know WHO it is, that it is YOU and not another, and must remain itself in any situation.

Adapt: Make something suitable to requirements or conditions; adjust or modify fittingly.

I, by nature, am an adapter. To some extent, all of us are born with the ability to adapt. In nature, it's necessary for survival - and in our social environments, it's necessary for peace. If we're in a healthy environment, adaptation isn't that harmful. But some of us have childhoods that force us to take on the nature of an extreme adapter in order to avoid conflict. And all of us are living in a world that wants to force us to adapt to it, and ultimately, to re-define our identity.

When we don't know our God-given identity in the first place, identity changes go unnoticed, or just seem reasonable.

And when YOU don't know who God made YOU to look like, to be, and to act, you'll chase alternate identities for the sake of being at peace & avoiding conflict with the world around you.

Identity Crisis: Confusion of goals and priorities. Personal internal conflict that involves confusion about one's role & a sense of loss of continuity to one's personality.

The last four days I've been in Los Angeles. Prior to that, I've been traveling the country in a car, living out of a duffle bag for 4 months, wearing the same pair of shoes every single day, and barely doing my hair and makeup. I've been staying with simple people, learning to live on a non-existant budget, and I've gone shopping twice in 6 months.

Recently, my life has been flooded with girls and women who don't know who they are anymore, who have been destroyed by our sex-saturated culture, whose boyfriends are addicted to porn, and who are stuck in jobs, relationships, and emotional messes that they hate.

96 hours in LA, and my heart ACHED. The city you live in and the television you watch are selling you sex, money & a lifestyle you won't ever get. I'm used to that. But here in LA, it's on steroids. Even billboards for bail bonds are dripping in sex and half dressed women with bodies I'll never have. I didn't realize what I'd become numb to until I saw it in its extreme.

Every billboard seemed to scream at me, "You will never be sexy enough, you will never attractive enough, you will never have enough money - I will sell you this lifestyle if it's the last thing I do." It's convincing, but what Hollywood doesn't know is that I'm driving home to my inbox full of women who have been destroyed by the lifestyle that those billboards and reality TV shows have been selling.

And I cannot bear it's weight.

I'm not buying into it, but my heart is pulled to the very thing that threatens its life.

So I called Christen almost in tears, and asked her to help me sort out my heart.

"It's conviction. You see the lie, and your heart is sensitive to it. You've always been sensitive to this. Pay attention to it. Don't ever cope with conviction. Don't ever quiet it. Don't ever tell yourself to learn to deal with it because the entire city is, or your friends are. Don't judge those who have bought into it, but don't adapt to them either."

What is coping? What is acting on conviction? How do you stay and keep your heart from hurting?

"Everywhere you go, you MUST acknowledge what is there. And then you ask yourself, 'Who is Lauren, and who is she here?' "

Identity crisis. The Lauren that LA is trying to sell me is one who should have miraculously found a way to hit the gym every day while traveling across the country, and who should have put more money for clothes into her budget. The Lauren that LA is trying to sell me is one that makes her work to death for the money. It tells me that no matter what my identity is in Christ, all men will always choose a sexy woman's body over my heart. The world tells me that my character and love and intelligence and sweetness and heart will never match up to the larger than life woman who drips sex 24/7, a hundred feet above traffic.

Traffic composed of men and women who have traded their God-given identities for the sake of avoiding conflict with the world around them.

Traffic composed of women so distracted by who they aren't, that they don't know who they are.

Traffic composed of girls who wake up hating their skin, their faces, their hair, their stomach, and their legs - and go to bed every night thinking about it.

I know, because I've been there. And these last 5 months have been some of the only months of my life that I haven't found disappointment in the mirror every single morning. But it came back this week. And to cope, I want new makeup, better fitting jeans, some heels that show off my legs, and have had no problem skipping meals.

96 hours of competition, and it's more than my heart can bear. Partially because I cannot win on those terms, but primarily because it's too painful for my heart to let go of who God has told me I am. I can feel something grasping and grabbing wildly for my heart. And I don't want to give it over.

I want to do something we women never do, and brag on myself: I LOVE WHO GOD MADE ME.

I LOVE my identity. The one God gave me.

I love that I always want to stand up for the defenseless.
I love that I see beautiful things in everything.
I love that I have flaws, because it makes me love the man who loves me in spite of them EVEN MORE.
I love that I get more excited over reading the book of Luke than any pop culture magazine.
I love that I want to hug everyone.
I love that I am beautiful to God.
I love that I see my friends as family.
I love that my heart rips open when I see girls in pain.
I love that all my mistakes are paid for by Grace.
I love that some days I know exactly what I'm doing & other days I haven't a clue.

I love that I am sensitive & affected by Los Angeles.
I love so many things about myself.

I adore the Name that God has given me.

And when the world asks me to adapt - to change, modify, or take on other versions of myself in order to avoid conflict or to be accepted, I will now always ask myself:

Who is Lauren? And who does SHE want to be HERE?

Isaiah 43:1-7 might be the greatest part of the Bible when it comes to your identity: "Do not fear, I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are Mine. When you pass through waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through rivers, you will not drown. When you walk through fire, you will not be burned. For I am the Lord your God - your Savior; I give all of creation for your ransom."

The word for "name" is not talking about your first, middle & last name. It's the word for your core. Your heart. Your soul. The deepest part of you that makes you unique. What makes up you. He has called you by THAT. And when you, the you that God created you as, walk through life - you will be untouchable. Because he has handed over the entire world for the sake of ransoming and redeeming the real you, for Himself. And he will fight for that you.

Put Isaiah 43:1-7 in your bathroom. And make a list of everything you love about yourself. Put into words who God says you are.

Please. The real you is too valuable to lose.

I Found A Lie Inside

How Do You Fall In Love With Jesus?

How do you fall in love with Jesus?

The same way you fall in love with anyone else.

They show interest in you, and you show interest back.

Someone initiates a conversation, and begins investing their time.

Talking to them becomes a priority because there's SOMETHING there that you don't understand yet, but just want more of.

They write you a love letter, and you read it over and over.

You write one back.

You make them a priority in your life, and begin carving time out of your daily routine because you want them. You want their attention, you want their love, you want to know who they are and how they work.

You sacrifice something here to show you care more for them than that, and you give up something there because you want to know what will happen if you spend just one more hour with them now.

You share your secrets with them. You tell them the best parts, the worst parts.

Give a little time every week, and you'll find you want it more than just on Friday or Saturday nights. Give them a little time every day, and you'll wonder why you thought that one thing was so important.

You talk about the things you'd rather not, but kind of do - just to see if they'll still want you.

The more you invest, the more you'll love.

This is what we were supposed to understand when we heard, "Where your treasure is, your heart will be also."

Somehow we turned it into a currency of money instead of a currency of time and intimacy.

Spend all your money on a person, and that's a cheap reason to stay.

Spend all your time and secrets on a person, and that's a heart you won't be able to leave.

Invest your treasures in Jesus, and your heart will follow.

Few of us love at first sight; we need beauty, passion, or interest to slowly reel us in.

Stop waiting for Jesus to be any of these things for you; he already has.

Beautiful enough to design the mountains and rivers for your admiration, passionate enough for you to die, and interested enough in you to sell off the whole world for you.

He wrote down his entire life story for you, a love letter thousands of pages long - just so you would know him and fall in love with him.

He fell in love with you before first sight.

And he's stopped at nothing - not even death - to show you how much he wants you.

He's waiting for you to start falling in love back.

Friends With Benefits for Relevant Magazine & Identity for DeeperStory

New Shop Launch!

Soooo those of you who have known me for awhile know that I used to have a cute little online shop that I loved - but it's been down for awhile.

And now it's back! I've quit my 9-5 job & am 100% freelancing, so the shop is quite necessary. Plus, I love it. :)

Come take a peek ♥

Art, Relationships, & The Lie That Keeps You From Having Both

I do a lot of things. I say that I do a lot of things. Photography, blog design, graphic design, writing, making jewelry, painting - I have a really bad case of, "oh that's amazing - I want to be able to do that!"

So I try. Really hard. Because I want it. Really bad.

I experiment, I Google things, I research it. I spend an ungodly number of hours reading, observing, and trying over and over and over.

I used to hate that I never had anyone to teach me what I wanted to be able to do. It's frustrating. Discouraging. Sometimes I feel like it's not worth it. Too much to tackle. Like I'm on my own. I've never had close friends or teachers that help me, guide me, & enable me to get better at whatever artistic endeavor I've got my hands in.

But over the years, I have started to see it as a gift. I am slowly perfecting the art of teaching myself.

We live in a world that admires "the self-taught" above everything else. "You TAUGHT yourself?" It's the ultimate compliment.

People look at someone who learned something on their own and ask, "HOW did you teach yourself that?"

How? Because they fully believed they could throw themselves into it and eventually figure it out.

Anyone who has learned anything on their own knows how frustrating it can be to be "self-taught." To spend 10 solid hours on something little and stupid, because you can't get to the next part until you figure it out. "If only I could just take a class on this." "If only I could just ask someone and get the answer."

But everyone who has spent 10 hours on something little and stupid also knows that they will never forget what they learned.

Everyone who has sought something with their entire heart has discovered that the greatest lie they can believe is that they "can't" unless someone else teaches them how. They learn that belief is everything they need to propel them forward.

And it becomes permanent to them. It becomes what they understand, not just know.

What they are capable of, not just what they replicated.

In a way, it becomes part of their identity.

It becomes worth it.

I like to think that God's primary characteristic is an artist. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created."

When we were created in his image, we were created with the innate ability to create and initiate on our own. More than that - the desire was embedded into our heart. We can initiate change; we are active, not passive creatures.

Last week I was asked, "how do I get a relationship with God like yours?" A few days ago, "how did you get past everything that happened to you?" And in the last 24 hours, several people who don't know how to pray or hear from God have crossed paths with me.

And everyone wants to be taught. Because in the moment, that seems impossible.

We all want to be "able," immediately.

We feel utterly directionless before we take the first step. We think we don't even know where to begin. We base our potential options off of failed actions in the past. "I tried that for like three years, it never worked." "I can't just....do that."

And so we decide, "I can't." Until someone comes along to teach us.

But what we're always forgetting is that God created us with the ability. God designed you with the ability to create. God MADE to have a relationship with him. The relationship you see other people having with him. God created you with everything you need to get past what happened to you. He designed your heart and soul explicitly for the purpose of communicating with God - sharing yourself with Him, and He sharing himself with you.

What we are forgetting is that God created us.

And just like everything else, a relationship with God is simple, but not easy.

You were born with the ability to have the relationship with Him that you want but don't know how to get. Believe it.

You were born with the ability to speak to a God you cannot see. Believe it.

You were born with the ability to overcome everything that has happened to you. Believe it.

You are able to chase God with everything you have, no matter what. Believe that in the end, it will be worth it.

Because it is when you doubt the possibility that you lose the ability.

If I didn't believe I could figure out how to use a camera, I never would have become a photographer.

If I didn't believe I could find the answer to my stupid broken code problem somewhere on Google, I would have stopped looking & never designed anything.

If I didn't believe that I could mess with paints enough to finally get it to do what I wanted, I would never create anything.

You must believe before you try.

If I didn't believe God would answer me, I would stop talking to him.

If I didn't believe God would love me the way I needed to feel love, I would have never asked him for it.

So, this is my encouragement to believe. And to try. To try hard.

Choose to believe. To experiment. To run, and fall. Climb, and slip. Mix things together, and find that they don't work. But slowly we get the answers, piece by piece. We master the next step, eventually.

And before you know it, you will have created. You will understand, not just know. You will have the relationship with God that you didn't have last month, last year, ten years ago.

Because you will have tried all the wrong ways - and it was hard - until you found that you could obtain what looked out of reach.

Because you were created by God. In His image.

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"You will seek me & find me when you seek me with ALL your heart." Jeremiah 29:13

It is written: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father & learns from him comes to me. John 6:45

No longer will a man teach his neighbor saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. Jeremiah 31:34

"I will put my law in their minds & write it on their hearts. I will be their God, & they will be my people. Jeremiah 31:33

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PS: I am raising money to get back home by selling photography from the first half of the trip! Please consider helping us out! <3

Come join me on Facebook! > >

Selling Photography From The Trip To Get Back Home!

Please come peek around at the online shop, and spread the word if you'd like to help us out. :)

We are in North Carolina at the moment, next stop is Nashville-ish & then making our way to Dallas. If you're anywhere between here, there, and LA (the final destination), get in touch with us! We'd love to meet you.

Oh, and Max wrote this on Wednesday & I think it's awesome: What Men Really Want.

♥

Sex, Faith & Men: What I Never Knew About Dating.

"Why don't you date him? He's a good guy."

"Just give him a chance. You never know unless you take the risk."

"Go on a few dates. Just because he isn't a Christian doesn't mean he will be a bad boyfriend."

"God can change people. Maybe he's the one. You can make it work.”

"We're just hanging out, it's not serious. It won't go anywhere."

"You're not deciding to marry him right this second. Just see how it goes."

I remember being a freshman in high school and believing heart and soul that I would never date a "non-believer," much less ever have sex with one. Fast-forward five or six years, and I've dated a couple. Fast-forward another year or two, and I'm sleeping with one that I'm not even dating.

No girl wakes up and says to herself, "I'm gonna fall head over heels in love with a man I'd never marry today" or decides over lunch that sex is just sex is just sex, and none of it is a big deal anyway. I didn't. And you probably didn't, but both of those things happen to us.

“Your first perfect Christian boyfriend broke your heart. You weren't supposed to mess around with him, but you did anyway. Now you might as well mess around with the next one. You've been perfect your whole life. You deserve to have some innocent fun. It's just going out for a drink - that isn't committing to a relationship. Cuddling as 'friends' isn't wrong. Marriage is like, a decade away. What are you supposed to do for ten years - be bored? Everyone has sex before marriage. And everyone ends up with a husband and happy in the end. You need to experience everything before you settle down and only have sex with one man for the freaking rest of your whole entire life.”

I don't know how it happened to you, but that's a glimpse of what happened to me. And I was the girl with the best intentions, the highest standards, and the most reasonable head on my shoulders. Maybe you got there a little differently, but it ended us both in the same place.

Why did it happen? Because we're human. Because life happens. Because we get hurt. Because we're built for relationships, but we're born broken.

And because too often as Christian girls, we are given the rules with no explanations. We're told the No's without the Yes's. We're given the worst-case scenarios without a picture of the amazing fun-filled, purpose-filled, hot sex & crazy love filled marriage that we were created for.

As Christian girls, we're told that sex gets us pregnant, ruins sex with our future husband & is SIN SIN SIN. The church has steered us away from sex by way of guilt, shame & fear. The problem with motivating by guilt & fear (instead of truth & life) is that the moment another area of our life collapses (which it will), we give up on everything. Because sin is sin is sin, right?

We say, "What the hell." And we give up a little, settle a little, stop caring a little.

This is what I didn't know about relationships. About men. About myself. About sex. About dating. About marriage. About life.

This is what I didn't know, that had I known, I might not have become addicted to things that slowly began to destroy me.

This is what I half-knew, that I pushed to the back of my mind and heart, believing that I couldn't have or couldn't find.

This is why you can't date a man who doesn't love Jesus, if you have given your life to the God who created, treasures and adores you.


- Because Love isn't enough to get you through anything. You have to respect him, too. There is something in the heart of a woman who loves Jesus that knows she can't fully respect a man who doesn't have God as his number one priority. If you don't respect him as a man, get out. If you question it now, you can expect it to be wholly sabotaged when things get rough. A man knows when you don't respect him, and there are few things more dangerous, problem-causing & explosive than a man without respect.

- When we evaluate relationships, we forget to set the stage at its worst - we just set it for now. Last week, my man hit rock bottom. As the woman who is promising to love & support him (and invest my entire life in him) no matter what, I HAVE to know that God loves, protects, will provide for, and will strengthen this man in my arms. If a man doesn't love God with his whole heart, I can't be assured that what I'm comforting him with is going to be delivered. I can't have faith in a man who doesn't have faith. I can't strengthen the faith of a man who doesn't have any to begin with.

- If you are a woman who loves Jesus, a man who doesn't love Jesus doesn't know who you truly are. Your identity is defined by God. You're lying to yourself if you think that your relationship with Jesus can remain in a box, outside of your romantic relationship. For a while, I told myself that if he understood every part of me except for the God part - that was okay. When you are created a new creation in Christ, ALL of you is "the God part." No part of you is untouched by your love for Jesus. And your man does not see that you - he sees a different woman.

- You need an anchor. One day you're going to fall apart. And you're going to need him to come to your rescue by way of God, not by himself. God is our rock, and our foundation. Max cannot be my savior. I cannot be his. And both of us need one. If you date a man who doesn't know his Savior, you are forced to fulfill that role, which as a human being, you cannot. And he will try to be your savior. And he can not. Everything will be okay because you believe in God, not because your boyfriend “believes in you.”

- When you've made the decision to follow Jesus, your perception of everything becomes wildly changed. Lifelong friendships are built not on similar interests, but on similar views of the world. Marriages are no different. It is said that marriages do not fail for lack of love, but lack of friendship. You're choosing a partner to take on the world with together for the rest of your life. You can't make it through the battle if he's seeing differently than you are. And you can't live with someone you wouldn't be friends with in the first place.

- He can't love you to the best of his ability if he doesn't love Jesus. I'm talking about the kind of love you need to survive a marriage. The love that lasts a lifetime. The lay-down-your-life-for-someone-kind-of-love. The world's definition is but a pale imitation of love. If you want to truly be loved by a man, you need to find one who has experienced unconditional, sacrificial love as is defined by God, the author of it. God created marriage as an image of Jesus' relationship with the church, and Jesus laid down his life out of love for his bride.

- You can't marry them, so why date them? Let's say you've already decided you won't marry a non-Christian - but what's wrong with "just" dating them? Your body is designed to bond utterly & completely with someone, through the release of dopamine & oxytocin. Dopamine is the chemical that drives you back to pleasurable things. In its most innocent form, it teaches a small child that puppies are awesome. In its most powerful form, it creates a natural addiction to the person you are physically involved with. You were created to be addicted to someone for the rest of your life. The addiction starts the moment dopamine is triggered and begins to flood your brain. The question is: are you created an addiction to something healthy, or unhealthy? (When Oxytocin is triggered, it teaches your mind to trust, and reduces fear. Consider the repercussions of programming your body to trust someone you know you shouldn't, and to be safe around someone you plan to break up with.)

It hurts. It's hard. You love him.

I'm not telling you to leave him because you're sinning, I'm telling you to go get addicted to a man you want in your life forever.

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Want to talk about it? Email me. laurennicolelove [at] gmail.com. I've been there.

Want to read more about what sex does to you? Read my post "I Was A Prostitute."

Want some lighter talk on dating? Read my post "I Met My Man on Twitter & I'm Writing You A How To Guide On Dating"

Is your boyfriend doing this? The Heart Leads & The Mind Protects: The Men To Love & The Men To Leave.

And lastly, check out my Good Woman's Guide To The 21st Century over on MakeItMad.

A Letter To The Girl Without A Father & Etc.

I have a confession.

I cannot function without a father.

I have a second confession.

I used to love God because it was the right thing to do. Now I love Him because I am desperate for a Dad.

I have a third confession. A confession that mocks the Devil.

I believe that Daddy Issues are a gift.

I am not too proud to say that I am a woman who now knows she would not have sought God any other way.

I am not too proud to say that it took the world shattering pain of my father’s absence to bring me to an empty parking lot in the middle of the night at age 19, 14 years after I was saved, where I began to Love my God.

Love him like I loved my father. Needed him like I needed my father. Wanted him like I wanted my father.

Read the rest of A Letter To The Girl Without A Father on DeeperStory.com > >

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My previous posts for Deeper Story: Love Was The Plan, The Most Important Thing, & Losing Everything.

I was also honored to write for POTSC (People Of The Second Chance) this week: I Was A Prostitute.

We are wrapping up the month on Body Image & Beauty at Good Women Project. Yesterday was Part One of An Eating Disorder, & today's post is Part Two. July's topic will be Let's Talk About Sex. If you want to share your story, please email me at goodwomenproject [at] gmail.com. <3

Join me on Facebook: LaurenNicoleLove & Good Women Project

Follow me on Twitter: @laurenlankford & @goodwomenproj

Rest: Conversations with God.

I'm learning that black and white often isn't sufficient for me. I love words. But I love the sky. And colors. And air. And space.

This was my conversation with God this morning. And how it felt.

Did you read my last post? I Was A Prostitute: The Truth About Sex. Also, I love this: Bodies & Beauty: My Almost-Eating Disorder.