JESUS’ GIRL

by Jennifer Greene-Sullivan

Last week, I sat down behind my son’s drums and played a song. I have never learned to play the drums, and I cannot read drum music. I also could not tell you exactly what my hands and feet were doing. Still, I have always felt rhythm somewhere inside me, and that afternoon I could hear the beat of a song I wanted to play.

So I sat down, picked up the sticks, listened, and began. Then I played the whole song. I played it again and again until I stopped thinking so much about what my hands were doing. Eventually, I closed my eyes and simply let the rhythm move through me.

My body seemed to know where the beat belonged, and for those few minutes, I was not evaluating myself or wondering whether I was doing it correctly. I was not analyzing whether I looked like someone who knew how to play the drums. I was simply playing. There was such joy in that.

Lately, I have been experiencing the same kind of freedom with watercolor. I paint because I want to paint, allowing water and pigment to move across the paper without needing to control every edge. Sometimes I draw, and sometimes I cut shapes from paper and glue them onto a painting. Sometimes I finish something and simply wonder what else it might become.

I listen, I do, I create, and I teach. Those verbs feel much different to me now because they are no longer tied so tightly to proving something about myself. I am learning to respond to what comes naturally rather than forcing everything into some carefully constructed plan. For much of my life, I did not live this way.

I have always been a Type A overachiever, and somewhere along the journey, I developed a very specific idea of who Jennifer was supposed to become and when she was supposed to become her. There were invisible deadlines attached to my life, along with standards and expectations that seemed to govern everything. Some of those expectations belonged to other people, while many of them belonged entirely to me. I became my own harshest critic because I was perpetually measuring the Jennifer who existed against the Jennifer I thought should exist.

Hardships only tightened my grip. When life became unpredictable, I tried harder to control the things I could control. I worked harder, planned more, worried more, and analyzed everything. Even things I loved could become another opportunity to measure whether I was doing enough or doing it correctly.

Somewhere underneath all of that striving, though, was a girl who had been there all along. She was the little girl who loved Jesus. Life had not erased her, and adulthood had not replaced her. The years of responsibility, disappointment, accomplishment, loss, motherhood, marriage, work, ministry, mistakes, and starting again had certainly changed her, but they had not taken away the simplest truth about who she was.

She belonged to Jesus.

At 48 years old, I am beginning to understand how profoundly liberating that truth actually is. I do not have to become Jennifer because I already am Jennifer. I also do not have to spend the rest of my life standing outside myself, watching her, correcting her, criticizing her, or worrying about what everyone else thinks of her. Not even what Jennifer thinks of Jennifer.

I am His, and that truth changes the way I understand growth. Freedom has not made me careless because I still revise my writing and work to become a better teacher. I still clean up a watercolor when something is not quite right, and I can learn new techniques, receive correction, make mistakes, and try again. What has changed is that I no longer have to turn any of those things into a verdict about who I am.

My identity was settled long before I picked up a paintbrush, stood in a classroom, published a book, wrote a column, or sat down behind a set of drums. None of those things created my worth. None of those things secured my belonging. I belong to Jesus.

Scripture Study: And So We Are

John writes, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” (1 John 3:1, ESV) I love the certainty found in those final words. John does not describe becoming God’s children as something we accomplish through sufficient effort. He begins with the Father’s love.

Our identity as His children originates in what He has given, not in what we have achieved. That matters deeply to someone who has spent much of her life achieving. The world teaches us to attach identity to performance, productivity, and recognition. The gospel moves in the opposite direction.

God loved us first, and through Christ, we belong to Him. Then we live from that belonging rather than working to earn it. Jesus describes that life in John 15 when He tells His disciples, “Abide in me, and I in you.” A few verses later, He says, “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.” (John 15:4–5, ESV)

A branch does not manufacture its own life because it receives life from the vine. For years, I think I sometimes confused fruitfulness with striving. If something mattered, I worked harder, and if something frightened me, I tightened my grip. If I felt uncertain about who I was becoming, I tried harder to construct the person I thought I should be.

Jesus offers another way. He calls us to remain with Him, receive from Him, and allow what grows in our lives to come from relationship with Him. That does not mean we become passive because branches connected to healthy vines produce fruit. Abiding produces a life that moves, serves, creates, loves, obeys, learns, and grows.

The difference is the source. I do not have to exhaust myself trying to manufacture what can only grow through communion with Jesus. I can remain with Him, listen, and respond. That rhythm feels completely different from the striving that governed so much of my life.

Reflection: Creating from Belonging

Maybe that is what has been changing in me. I am learning to create within my relationship with Jesus rather than constantly trying to create a life that proves something about me. So I paint, I write, I teach, and apparently, now I play the drums. Sometimes I even close my eyes.

I am no longer grieving some imaginary timeline or asking why I did not discover certain things about myself twenty years ago. I am here now, and Jesus is here with me. There is freedom in discovering what He placed inside me without needing to know where every discovery will lead. There is also freedom in knowing that I will not be equally good at everything I try.

I can make an ugly painting, miss the beat, or write a paragraph that needs to be deleted. I can teach a lesson that sounded much better in my head than it did when a room full of teenagers stared back at me. None of those things changes who I am. Failure is allowed to be information instead of identity.

Success is allowed to be a gift instead of identity. Neither failure nor success gets to name me because Jesus already has. I think that is one reason I am finding so much joy in creating right now. I am no longer asking every creation to prove something about its creator.

I am simply enjoying being His.

Challenge: Who Are You Trying to Become?

Maybe you have your own imaginary version of yourself. You know the one who has accomplished more, made fewer mistakes, earned more money, raised perfect children, developed better habits, or achieved greater spiritual maturity. Perhaps you thought you would understand life more clearly by now. Maybe you have spent years comparing the person God is loving today with the person you think you should have become.

Ask Jesus to show you where striving has replaced abiding. Pay attention to the places where you are constantly measuring yourself and where fear of failure keeps you from trying. Notice whether the opinions of others control your decisions or whether your own criticism has become louder than what God says about you. Then return to 1 John 3:1.

And so we are.

If you belong to Christ, begin there. Begin before the title, before the accomplishment, before the mistake, and before the thing you still have not figured out. You are His. Then ask Him what He would have you do from that place of belonging.

Maybe you need to create something, teach something, rest, or try something you have secretly wanted to try for years. Perhaps you simply need to sit quietly with Jesus long enough to remember who you were before the world handed you a list of who you were supposed to become. Listen for His direction without forcing an answer. Then respond.

Jesus’ Girl

Something happens when I stop spending so much time looking at myself. I begin looking at Him instead. Isaiah describes the seraphim surrounding God’s throne and calling to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3, ESV) That reminder places everything else in its proper position.

The glory was never mine. The painting is not the point, and the drums are not the point. The writing is not the point, and even the freedom I am experiencing is not ultimately the point. Jesus is.

I was His little girl, and then I grew up. Life added expectations and hardships, titles and responsibilities, successes and failures. For a while, I mistook all those layers for my identity and exhausted myself trying to manage the woman underneath them. But Jesus knew her all along.

Underneath every layer, the simplest truth remained. I am Jennifer, and I am Jesus’ girl. I do not need to be anything more or anything less. I am simply His.