Loss of self.

I just turned thirty. I am old enough that I should no longer be a child, but young enough that I still have more than half (lord willing) of my learning ahead of me. I have birthed two babies and am currently nurturing another in preparation for birth; I have entered marriage; I have had a career; I have moved to be closer to family, then been carried farther away than ever before by God's call on my family's life, and all of these have carried their own growing pains. There have been phases of life when for all the "hard" I couldn't really feel anything, then phases where I felt so much when it didn't seem like there was a cause.  And it's amazing to think that in it all and through it all, the cause and the call, and the goal have all been the same.
  In all my striving, seeking, working, hoping, living, the call has been to "find myself".  This season I am now walking through is so interesting because so much of who I "am", demonstrated in what I do, is wrapped up in the identity and needs of other; my children, husband, and church. And sometimes the acinine fear that I am loosing pieces of who I am sneaks in and whispers that I need to grip those shards tightly or I will entirely loose what makes me myself. Then I read John 12:24-26. "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life... Where I am, there will my servant be also." All my fears are answered here. If I am merely trading identities, finding myself IN my family, IN my church, then I am still loosing life. If I am gripping the things that I feel make up who I am, then I will end up alone and empty handed. But, if I am following Christ where he leads, and sacrificing my very life as I live it, then I am gaining Christ who is my life. The thought that my "self"- made valuably in the image of God- is of more value than the one that I dimly reflect is preposterous! How could any piece of me lost by surrender to Christ (the one who breathed it into life at first) ever be lost at all? How could it be anything other than healed and perfected?!

  So, my plea for this third decade of my life is that I might only loose the things which I have been given as I release them to Christ, following where He is. No substitution of identity, no side line idolatry,  no fearful resentment of self-loss, but open palmed offering of everything that I've been given. That I might follow Christ and be found where he is.