Mike Schmitz

"If my experiences define me, then that’s who I am. Or if I’ve chosen the wrong thing, if I’ve gone down this path that I shouldn’t have gone down—if my experiences define me, then that’s who I am. But I can be defined by something more, by my origin, by the fact that I’ve been made on purpose by a God who loves me, and am defined by my end, which is that I am made to live with that God forever and that I’ve been created on purpose. If I’m a Christian, I’ve been recreated as a son or daughter of God himself, and so even if my experience or even my story has a lot of brokenness in it—and I think a lot of ours do—and even if my experience or my story has a lot of pain or attraction to whatever, it doesn’t matter. My identity is not that. And I can rise above that. I can live it. It’s part of my story, but that’s not the end of my story."