Where is your worth?

To be honest, I was not super excited to post this because it's something super relevant and a struggle that I am working on right now. Some of the honest things I've shared have been past tense so I can confidently share that I've moved past whatever it was. But this, this is literally last week, but this blog is all about being authentic so here goes!

The last 2 weeks have been absolutely hectic with finishing off my first year of Masters so I was a little stressed with getting everything done and battling the normal end of semester exhaustion and then about 10 days before I finished, a friend asked me what my plans were for my 4 month break. Before then I was so distracted by just getting through a week at a time that I hadn’t even given it a thought, and I noticed this huge extra anxiety kick in as I kinda freaked out about what on earth I was supposed to do for that long. I had the fantastic idea to do some sort of course and started looking into a few but ended up deciding that investing so much into a summer project, that I wouldn’t probably have time to use, wasn’t the smartest idea. But I still couldn’t shake this strong desire to do a course, that would be something that I could work hard at and receive a certificate of completion at the end of it, so I sat down and tried to analyze and backtrack why I was feeling this way. And then I clicked - A course + certificate = achievement and without uni, I don’t have any other official achievements and without that, who am I and what do I do? Being super goal driven has its strengths due to being able to get a lot of things done, but it also is a trap of finding worth, joy and satisfaction from what I do rather than who I am. I was on this training session for a church thing on Monday and the speaker started with this quote that was incredibly perfectly timed - “What you do matters, but who you are matters more.” And who I am and who you are, is a child of God, a precious son or daughter, set apart, chosen, a uniquely designed masterpiece, and known intricately by a loving, powerful and Heavenly Father. When you do the most amazing and sacrificial thing, none of those statements change, and when you make the biggest mistake of your life, none of those statements change. No matter WHAT you do, you are still worth DYING FOR and loved more than you could ever imagine! Obviously we are still called to be His witnesses, make wise choices, honor Him in what we do etc, and all that is important because our choices have consequences that are good or bad, so all of what we do determines what our life looks like here on Earth. But it does NOT define our worth, neither does what we look like, or how much money we have, or our relationship status, or how fit we are, or anything else society throws at us. You are enough just as you are because Jesus makes us enough.

I often wrestle with this seeming conflict between just accepting God's grace, knowing that He's the One who has paid the price for my sin and nothing I could ever do could make up for my sin, and doing things for Jesus and travelling the 'narrow path' like He's called us to. But what I've learnt, and what I'm trying to transfer into my life, is that it's not an either/or. It's not always receive God's grace, living however I want, and it's not running myself into the ground trying to earn my place or prove my worth through what I do every single day. When we spend time with Jesus, and we accept His grace, His grace and strength equips and inspires us to do those things that He has called us to do. He wants to spend time WITH us so He can fill us and send us back out to the crazy world to do thing FOR Him. But still, how we navigate this balance doesn't change our worth.

Growing up I had to deal with a fair amount of rejection, being ignored and feeling very invisible and so my default setting became "do things for people so they keep me around". I felt like if I was at least needed, I would have friends and people would like me. And it's been a massive and scary shift to take that burden off myself to be this perfect friend, and accept that the beautiful friends that I have now in my life, are ones that have me there because they WANT me and I'm worth something to them because of who I am not what I do for them. And it's the exact same with God - He wants you around and loves spending time with you, because you're His precious child, worth more than gold.

It is great to have goals, it's great to have achievements, it's great to look after your body and be happy with what you look like, it's great to be a good steward with any resources that God has given you, it's great to be married and/or parent, and it's great to chase after the dreams on your heart. But if something happened and your life was turned upside down, and that thing you hold tightly to disappeared, who are you? Who are you late at night when no one else is awake? Who are you in your hardest and most painful moments when you don't know what to do and you feel so alone? You are still YOU and you are still worth just as much as your happiest and best moment. It's super scary letting go, because it feels like you're giving up the control and the safety net of that thing, (there's that word 'surrender' again!) but there is a MUCH deeper joy from God defining your worth than anything here on earth because all this stuff changes and fades away while God remains faithful and loving from your first to your last breath. And there is so much peace that comes from releasing the pressure to be good enough on your own because you know that your worth isn't decided or affected by you, it's decided by Jesus and He will ALWAYS say you're worth it. This next 4 months of my life is my challenge to work on not only knowing all this in my head, but living out the identity and worth that God has given me, without a lot of the things that I do (and love doing). To challenge myself to days where I can just BE without needing to accomplish anything, and to not worry that I will be less loved by God or by anyone else in my world. This is not the first time, and probably won't be the last time I'll be working on this, and to be totally honest, I was totally unaware that it had popped up again but that's okay because I'll keep growing and get quicker at recognizing my patterns. And I invite you to join me, take a quick soul search at what 'worth definers' might be hiding in your life, and create your own challenge - think about what brings YOU the most satisfaction out of life, and think about whether you're finding your worth from that thing/things (cos let's be honest, sometimes we look for it in lots of places and I'm definitely guilty of this too!) or whether you're doing those things while resting in the identity of being God's child before you were anything else. Much love to you all as you find your freedom in just being God's beloved child!