Stand and Feel Your Worth
Wake, stand and feel your worth, O my soul.
Feel and know the word that can save us all.
At Sunday school and at youth group we’ve been talking about self-image: how we view ourselves in relation to how we view God. The correlation is this: if you are told you are a slut long enough you believe it about yourself and therefore believe that God thinks you’re a slut also. Or a loser. Or a failure. Or whatever putdowns you have been bombarded with.
I guess you just figure that if the world thinks you’re one way, it must be true, and God views you the same way.
And me? I feel like I’m a pretty self-confident girl. I’ve have good grades, a fun job, shiny red hair, and an amazing internship… but only half of me relishes in that. (And that side also has a tendancy to relish in all that a bit TOO much.)
The other half of me is convinced that I am inadequate. I am unworthy of everything and everyone I pursue. It’s like this: I may be smart, but a voice is reminding me that I’m not smart enough. I may be pretty, but Ashley and Sam are prettier. I’m only second-rank. I can never be the best.
And maybe, maybe I cannot be the best. But it’s killer to hear that I will never be good enough.
I constantly feel this way. I feel like I’m unworthy of dating a man-after-God’s-own-heart kind of guy or befriend a certain person because they’re too intelligent or cool. I’m unworthy. I’m not good enough and never will be.
I fight this; whenever I feel uncomfortable with not being up to par with the people around me I start to fight my insecurities with pride. Well, they may be more outgoing, but I’ve got more drive. Or, she may have a better voice, but I can write better.
I thought this way all my life: through middle school, through my underclassmen days. I just don’t feel that I’m worthy of anything. That I don’t matter. That I can never be good enough.
( Maybe this is why I have so much drive; I want to prove myself worthy. )
Nevertheless, through Tom’s message Sunday night and morning I got to expose this stuff. I feel freer, not completely but I know in time I’ll overcome. It’s hard to let go of stuff you’re used to. You know, “old habits die hard.”
I do know this–I matter. I’m worthy. God made all men equal, meaning I am worthy to be the friend of anyone in the world. No one is greater than me. (But I am not called to put myself above anyone else either.)
George MacDonald put it this way–I love this!–“Here there is no room for ambition. Ambition is the desire to be above one’s neighbor; and here there is no possibility of comparison with one’s neighbor: no one knows what the white stone contains except the man who receives it…. Relative worth is not only unknown–to the children of the Kingdom it is unknowable” (emphasis mine).
I assume I’ll have more on this later, but right now I think I’ll just bask in the fact that I matter to God. :-)
March 3, 2008