What a Loss Can Reveal About Worth, Success, and Who You Believe You Are

There are things about ourselves that are really hard to admit.

Not because we're intentionally hiding them. Sometimes we genuinely don't see them.

I don't think most of us would sit across the table from someone and say, “My worth comes from what I accomplish.”

Especially as Christians.

We know our identity is in Christ. We know our worth isn't determined by a title, a paycheck, how successful our children are, whether our marriage looks a certain way, or how many people need us.

I knew those things too.

But knowing something and actually living from it aren't necessarily the same thing.

You can believe with your whole heart that your identity is in Christ and still discover places where you've quietly been looking to something else to tell you that you're enough.

And sometimes you don't discover it until that thing is threatened.

Or gone.

I didn't realize how much I needed to succeed

For a lot of my life, being driven looked like a strength.

I worked hard. I accomplished things. I kept going when things were difficult. I learned how to be the person people could depend on.

There are parts of that I'm grateful for.

But when I started getting curious about my own story, I had to acknowledge that not all of that drive came from a healthy place.

Some of it came from fear.

Some came from wanting approval.

There were places where achievement made me feel valuable, and being needed made me feel secure.

Failure felt much more personal than, Well, that didn't work.

It could feel like something about me wasn't working.

That's difficult to admit because we tend to separate these things into categories.

Either I'm a strong, successful, high-achieving person.

Or I'm wounded and trying to prove myself.

I've learned that both can be true.

I can genuinely love what I do and still have parts of my identity wrapped up in doing it well.

I can be called to something and still use success in that calling to validate myself.

I can serve people because I love them while also discovering that being needed is meeting a need in me.

Acknowledging that doesn't erase everything good about what we've accomplished.

It just gives us the opportunity to understand what's underneath it.

 

The question isn't only what you do. It's what doing it means to you.

Think about the thing you're really good at.

The thing people know you for.

Now imagine not being able to do it anymore.

What comes up?

If your career changed tomorrow, would you still know who you are?

If your children didn't need you in the same way, would you know what to do with yourself?

If the ministry you built ended, would you question whether God could still use you?

If someone else received the opportunity you've been working toward, would their success somehow make you feel smaller?

If you weren't the strong one anymore, would you let someone take care of you?

I don't ask those questions so we can criticize ourselves for the answers.

I think they're worth asking because they can reveal the difference between:

I really want this.

and

I need this to be okay.

From the outside, those can look exactly the same.

Inside us, they are very different.

 

Loss has a way of showing us things

I've had experiences I would never have chosen that eventually revealed something about me I couldn't see while everything was going according to plan.

I think that's part of what makes loss so complicated.

You're grieving what happened, but sometimes you're also confronting what that thing represented.

It wasn't just the job. → It was who you were when you had the job.

It wasn't only the relationship. → It was being chosen.

It wasn't just losing the opportunity. → It was what getting the opportunity would have proven.

That's harder to talk about.

It's much easier to tell someone, “I'm disappointed I didn't get it,” than to say, “I'm scared that not getting it means I'm not as valuable as I thought I was.”

But that second conversation is often where there's something worth exploring.

Not with shame.

With curiosity.

Why does this hurt as much as it does?

That question doesn't diminish the loss. It helps us understand whether we're grieving only what happened or also what we've decided it means about us.

 

How we respond when things don't go as planned matters

Paul gives us a picture of what happens when God doesn't change the circumstance?

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about the “thorn” he had been given. We aren't told exactly what it was, but we do know he didn't want it.

He asked the Lord three times to take it away.

I appreciate that detail.

Paul didn't pretend he preferred the circumstance he was in. He asked for something different.

And God didn't remove it.

Instead, Paul received the answer:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

That isn't the answer most of us are hoping for when we're asking God to change something.

We want the door to reopen.

We want the relationship restored.

We want the diagnosis changed.

We want the opportunity back.

We want the situation resolved.

We want God to remove the thorn.

There are times when He does.

And then there are times when the circumstance remains and something begins changing within us instead.

I think those seasons can expose how much of our peace has depended on getting the outcome we wanted.

Can I still believe God is good when the answer is no?

Can I still know who I am when something I believed was part of my identity is gone?

Can I receive His grace here instead of waiting to feel okay until the circumstance changes?

Those aren't easy questions.

Paul's thorn didn't disappear.

But it no longer had to determine his worth, his calling, or whether God could use his life.

The thing he wanted God to remove became a place where he learned something about God's strength that he might not have learned without it.

 

The response is often even harder when what went wrong involves another person.

It's one thing to accept a circumstance we can't control.

It's another when we believe someone made a decision that was unfair.

When we've been misunderstood, rejected, overlooked, criticized, or treated unjustly, there is something in us that wants the record corrected.

I understand that.

We want to explain ourselves.

We want someone else to recognize what happened.

We want the person who hurt us to acknowledge it.

And there are absolutely situations where we should speak up, advocate for ourselves, address harm, establish a boundary, or pursue appropriate accountability.

But I've also had to ask myself a harder question:

What happens inside me when I don't get the response I believe I deserve?

First Peter 2:23 says this about Jesus: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.”

That doesn't describe weakness.

Jesus wasn't confused about who He was. He wasn't incapable of speaking truth or confronting wrongdoing. We see Him do both throughout the Gospels.

But His identity wasn't dependent on winning the argument.

He didn't need another person's verdict to establish what God had already said about Him.

I find that incredibly challenging.

Because when I feel misunderstood, my first impulse can be to make sure you understand me.

I want to explain one more thing.

Clarify one more detail.

Make sure the story is accurate.

At some point, though, I have to ask whether I'm speaking because something genuinely needs to be said or because I need the other person to agree with me before I can be at peace.

Those are different motivations.

There is a freedom in being able to say: I can tell the truth about what happened without needing to control what someone else does with that truth.

I can advocate for myself without reviling someone in return.

I can establish a boundary without needing revenge.

I can disagree without trying to destroy someone's character.

I can be disappointed with an outcome and still choose how I want to show up in response to it.

And I can entrust the parts I cannot control to God.

That's not passivity.

That's self-leadership.

 

How to respond to the voices in our heads that aren't entirely ours

The deeper I've gone into my own story, the more I've recognized how much gets passed from one generation to another without anyone intentionally deciding to pass it down.

A critical voice.

Fear of failure.

The need to keep everyone happy.

Difficulty expressing emotion.

Perfectionism.

The belief that good people don't make mistakes.

The belief that honoring someone means we can't talk honestly about how they hurt us.

At some point I began asking questions about the people who came before me.

What happened to them?

What did they learn about emotions?

What were they afraid of?

What did survival require from them?

It didn't erase the impact their choices had on me.

It gave me something I didn't have before.

And with context came compassion.

I could finally hold two things together:

That hurt me. And: I can understand more about why they became that way.

Understanding someone's story isn't excusing their behavior.

Honoring someone doesn't require rewriting ours.

We can tell the truth about what happened and still refuse to reduce another person to the hardest parts of their story.

Then we get to decide what continues through us.

I can't change what happened three generations ago.

I can become aware of what I've inherited and choose what gets passed to the next one.

 

Let’s get to the heart of the matter, calling should flow from identity, not create it

I think this is especially important for those of us who deeply believe God has called us to something.

Calling can become identity too.

It can happen so subtly.

We start with: God called me to do this.

And somewhere along the way it becomes: This is who I am.

But what happens if the assignment changes?

If I am only valuable when I'm fulfilling a particular role, a change in direction won't simply feel disappointing.

It can feel like losing myself.

I don't want to become so attached to what God is doing through me that I lose sight of who I am with Him.

The title can change.

The platform can change.

The business can change.

The ministry can change.

The people we're called to serve can change.

Our season can change.

None of those things determine our worth.

Before anyone knew your name, you were loved.

Before you accomplished anything impressive, you had worth.

Before the promotion, degree, marriage, business, ministry, book, platform, or title, you belonged to God.

And if all of those things changed tomorrow, you would still belong to Him.

I know that's easier to write than it is to live.

Which is probably why we need to talk about it.

 

So how do you take a step forward when something doesn't go the way you planned.

Let’s first acknowledge you don't have to immediately figure out what it means.

You can be disappointed.

You can wish the answer had been different.

You can ask God to change it.

Paul did.

But if the thorn remains, the door stays closed, or someone never gives you the response you hoped for, perhaps there's another question waiting beneath the one you've already been asking.

Instead of only: God, when are You going to change this?

We might eventually become curious enough to ask: God, what are You showing me here?

Is my worth attached to something I didn't realize?

Am I trying to control someone else's perception of me?

Is an old fear of failure making this loss feel like a verdict on who I am?

Am I being invited to develop a capacity I didn't need in the last season?

Has an assignment ended without my calling ending?

I don't know what the answer will be for you.

That's the part we can't rush.

Our stories don't usually make perfect sense while we're standing in the middle of them.

But something not going according to plan doesn't get to decide who you are.

Neither does someone else's opinion.

Neither does a title you've lost.

Neither does the thing you've asked God to remove that hasn't been removed yet.

Perhaps the deeper work isn't only figuring out what happens next.

It may be discovering who you are when the outcome isn't the one you wanted.

 

Let's Go Deeper Into This Conversation

This is where my recent conversation with Dr. Janet S. Abadir took us.

Janet practiced general surgery for 24 years before an unexpected ending to her career brought questions about performance, success, identity, and worth to the surface. Her story eventually opened a much larger conversation about family and culture, perfectionism, generational patterns, our desire for approval and vindication, and what happens when God changes the assignment.

In Part One, When Your Identity Is Tied to Success, we talk about the beliefs that can form around achievement and what loss can reveal about where we've been finding our worth.

Then in Part Two, When God Changes Your Calling, we go deeper into identity in Christ, generational healing, releasing our need for vindication, and the unexpected calling Janet discovered after leaving medicine.

If you've ever found yourself wondering who you are when the thing you worked so hard for changes—or why an outcome you didn't want has affected you so deeply—I hope you'll join us for both parts of this conversation on It's Your Story to Tell.