How to find yourself again

I keep hearing this:  "I don't know who I am.  "I'm so confused."

What makes a person lose their sense of grounding, to start swirling?  I know I've felt like that before--going through suffering--broadsided by pain.

In this case, however, these thoughts are coming from women who have one thing in common--they are straying.  Women who don't know each other, but have chosen the same path: escape my pain through the love/attention of another man.

And they lose themselves.

But they think they like it.

And this verse sets me on fire when I hear it: "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."

First the ingratitude, then the futile hopeless mind, then the darkening of the heart.

The seared conscience speaks, "I don't know who I am.  I am so confused." 

Romans says the conscience is active even in the man who does not follow Christ or have the Holy Spirit: "their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them." 

How much more is he active in the life of a believer who knows they are walking in a sin/lifestyle that God commands them not to?  Will not their minds accuse them and defend them?  And if their minds accuse them, but they like it...will their minds not defend their sin, as well?  And so they are Confused.  Their minds say, "Yes, this is OK, and No, this is not OK."  And then the swirling and tumbling and losing of one's grounding.

I see the forked path here.  Either give in to the sin and God will "give you over to a depraved mind," or step out of denial and stand with Christ admitting the sinfulness of the present path--agree with God about your sin and repent.  Both paths are painful, but one ends in death.  Moving forward in Christ will bring grief, but also refining and ultimately blessing because

He promises us that if we obey his commands--we will be happy.  

Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.  Ps 119:35 NLT