FInding value

For all the years before I encountered the fullness of Jesus, I walked to the beat of a very clear and loud lie.

You're not as valuable as the next person.

Maybe this stems from the moment I chose to follow Jesus as a little girl. There were two of us in Sunday School class that day, watching the story of Jesus play out on green felt boards. And both of us raised our hands when the teacher asked if we wanted salvation. I prayed the prayer, and I knew, in my five year old little heart, that Jesus had come inside and made me different.

That night, when people were giving testimonies of the good things God was doing (anyone else grow up with Sunday night testimony time?!) that teacher gave thanks for the other little girl who had chosen to follow Jesus...but she didn't mention me. To be fair, I was the pastor's granddaughter, so she probably thought I had already prayed that prayer a hundred times. I don't think she had intentions of leaving me out. Nevertheless, I vividly remember the imprint that moment left on my soul. 

You're not as valuable as the next person.

When I encountered Jesus some twelve years ago, this was the belief He immediately began to unravel inside of me. He said things like, "I see you, I've always known you, I choose you..." None of those things had played over and over in my heart for all those years before. Abuse, religion, deep pain and brokenness seemed to confirm the lie that I really wasn't as valuable as the next person. When Jesus began showing me his constant presence in my journey, how He had never once turned away, how He had been following close behind me, picking up the pieces of my heart and holding them until I was ready to sit with Him, and heal...

That Jesus was unraveling the lie inside of me, and I found I had no argument to make against the deep compassion in His voice. All these years later, I still find myself circling back to that lie, and finding cracks where it wants to seep in and diminish my identity. It doesn't come in neon letters, screaming. It is subtle. It finds wounds, and speaks through them. 

For a long time, religion was the very comfortable adornment I tried adding to myself to make me valuable. Maybe if I just knew more, maybe if I just looked better, maybe if I just obeyed perfectly. Surely these were the answers to my broken heart's need to be known. It's been over a decade now of me pursuing the way of grace, free of religion, but those familiar thoughts come creeping in as soon as I hear that lie.... 

You're not as valuable as the next person. 

Value. What even determines the value of something? Everything in this world is losing it's value, because it's decaying under the weight of a broken world. Money's value is circumstantial. What I own is only as valuable as culture tells me. Even priceless treasures from history are only as valuable as we, the people, make them. I find it very easy to apply this principle to my own value. It's easy to believe my value is circumstantial, based on culture's perception, only as treasured as the people say...

Yet, Jesus. All I see in His three years of work on this earth is constant encounters with the ones who circumstance deemed of less value. I see him encounter the ones people said were not treasured, and call them to His side. When I look to Jesus, I see value taking on a different definition. 

I see it becoming who He is in me, not who I am to everyone else. 

In Jesus, what was once decaying now begins to increase. I find myself lately, pounding the floor with my fists, and telling Jesus that I am done with the lies. I'm ready to walk in the value of being His. What might that look like, to fully step into the place where man's opinion is of no consequence? I know I'm close to that place of wild abandonment. I see how far I've come, steps I've taken in the last year, and I know that I am so very close...

I see this image often of me, standing on the edge of a cliff, looking over into the beautiful valley below. I know instinctively that I'm standing on the ground where people would approve, and if I jump, I'm jumping into the wildness of being found in Jesus alone. Jesus is there, next to me. He isn't rushing me, He isn't insisting that I jump...but He has said He will jump with me, that we will do it together. I think I'm about done holding back and hesitating. I feel it in my bones, that I'm just about ready to jump off that cliff, with Jesus. 

I think maybe many of us are ready to jump. I sense it in conversation with other Jesus lovers. I feel it in my soul...a desire to abandon the plans and precepts of man, for the wild, bold, passionate love of Jesus alone. I'm ready friend. Are you? 

Make me as wild as you, Jesus, so consumed with love that I only know how to live in that place of abandonment to you, because I know it now, deep in my bones.

I'm as valuable as the next person, and nothing can change that.