Am I known?

If you really knew me, all the good and bad about me, would you still love me?

Am I enough just the way I am?

Will you choose me?

Sitting in the audience at the SoulCare Conference last fall, Audrey Huber, a seventh-grader at the time, didn’t really expect to hear from God. She and her step mom Erin Huber, a counselor at CityCare Counseling, were attending the conference together. Erin knew that Audrey was experiencing some identity issues, fairly common to students in middle school. While Erin hoped that Audrey would have a powerful encounter with God at the conference, Audrey wasn’t so sure about the event. Audrey shared, “I just thought the conference would be just like a sermon, but way longer. My expectations were kind of low. I didn’t really expect it to be life-changing, but I was wrong!” 

That Friday evening, as Erin and Audrey listened to Dr. Terry Wardle share about core identity issues and desires, Erin wasn’t sure if Audrey was connecting with the message. Near the end of the evening, Dr. Wardle asked everyone in the audience to close their eyes. He then encouraged everyone to ask the Holy Spirit to show a picture of what identity in Christ looks like. Audrey asked the Holy Spirit to send her a picture of her identity in Christ, but she didn’t really expect an answer. As she waited, a picture popped into her head, a picture so different from what she was thinking that she knew it wasn’t something she had come up with. Audrey began to cry. 

From the tears, Erin could tell Audrey had experienced something during the quietness. The two left the conference a few minutes early. On the drive home, Erin asked Audrey what she had experienced. 

“In the vision/picture,” Audrey shared, “a man walked into an adoption center. He wanted to adopt a child. There were many types of kids, athletic ones, artistic ones, smart ones. I was standing alone in the group of children, not wanting to bother the man—he obviously would want one of the other children. But to my great surprise, he pointed at me. ‘I want her,’ the man said.” As she sat in the Worship Center, she didn’t know what to think. A little overwhelmed, a little shocked, the tears slid down her cheeks.  

As Erin and Audrey talked about the vision and what it meant, Audrey began to recognize that the man in the vision was someone special. The man who wanted to adopt a child, who could have picked any of the children in the room but who had specifically picked her, his name was Jesus. The vision she experienced touched her deeply. She said, “I felt loved, like a different kind of loved, to know that God chooses me.”  

Almost a year after the conference, Audrey still thinks back to the vision she experienced. The circumstances of her life haven’t changed. She still experiences the challenges she faced the previous year. Sometimes she feels tension with the relationships in her family. However, when she feels that tension, she thinks back to the vision. She remembers what it felt like to know, to truly know in the depths of her soul, that she was known and loved and chosen by God.

Rachel Bebee is the Project Coordinator for the Creative/Communications Team at Christ Community Church