The last few months God has really been working on my heart. He's been showing me what it really looks like to be his daughter. He's been showing me what my worth is. Looking back I realize that God began teaching me this before I even left America, but it wasn't until I was away from the distractions of home, and found myself really listening to him, that I began to hear and understand him.
I have found such beautiful, encouraging community in the past year. God has brought people into my life that have been intentional with me, people that have wanted to really know me. People that have poured into me in ways I don't think they even realize. People that have been quietly, but constantly teaching me to love myself well.
As a 20 year oldgirl woman living in todays world I am constantly told what the world thinks my worth is. I am bombarded by it. It is utterly inescapable. It is entirely overwhelming.
I can't open a magazine without being told what to wear, or how to act, or "how to get the guy."
Social Media has me constantly seeking the approval of my peers, because we all know that if you didn't get enough likes on that photo or that status, it just wasn't pretty enough, good enough, funny enough.We are I am constantly allowing, in fact eagerly awaiting the approval of my 'friends' and 'followers'.
In a society raised on Happily-ever-afters and Romantic Comedies,I'm told that I often believe that my worth lies in companionship. Finding the ever elusive One that is somewhere out there.
There are days, the majority, that the world leaves me self conscious. That cause me to question who I am. But I'm not like her. I don't look that that. I'm just not as smart as her. Days that the world does what the world does best; knocks me down. But when I'm letting my days be dictated by the world, the flip side isn't much better. When the pages of a magazine tell me I'm doing okay, or my 'followers' really like what I've been doing that day, or that cute guy at the coffee shop compliments me, I'm left thinking that this is where my worth lies. These are the things that are important, that define me.
As a 20 year old in todays world Ihave a am desperately trying to escape the distorted view I have of myself. It is a constant, daily battle to seek the Lord in the midst of a world that is yelling for me to find my worth in any and everything else. There are so many days that I fail, that I stumble fall flat on my face, and give in to what the world says.
Through the community I have been so blessed to have found, I have been slowly shedding lies about myself. Lies I have believed for too long.
While I was in India my team and I wrote out a list of lies that we believe about ourselves. It wasn't hard to fill my page. The strange thing about it was, I was acknowledging that they were lies. As I wrote each one on my page under the heading Lies, I knew that they weren't true... but I still believed them. I still measured myself by what they said.
We were then given a fresh sheet of paper with the heading Truths. We took every lie, and wrote the truth to it. The truths that, at least in my case, I really didn't believe. The truths did not flow as easily from my pen as the lies had. Even as I sat in a room with ten girls that loved me, and wanted to pour into me, to affirm me, the enemy was still in my ear.
We took turns standing in front of the rest of the girls on our team and read aloud our truths. Saying, not only out loud but in front of other people, positive things that we didn't necessarily believe about ourselves was hard. Really hard. Tearing down lies that have deep rooted themselves in you, is painful.
But it was also freeing. To know that you can say those things, that somewhere inside you they do ring true. To know that ten other women, your sisters in christ, heard you affirm yourself and love yourself and that are fighting the same battle along side you.
I am a young Christian woman whose worth is in the Lord. I am a young Christian woman who is constantly told that that is not enough, that the worldwants needs more from me. I know I am not in minority. The world wants me to think that I am alone in feeling this way. I am not.
The past year God has blessed me with unbelievable community. Community that has accepted me and loved me and is showing me that those truths I don't fully believe about myself are just that. Truths. God gave us community to experience his love.
In his beautifully written, somewhat controversial book Washed and Waiting, Wesley Hill speaks a lot about how important community is. Hill struggles a lot with insecurities and understanding his worth in a world that doesn't always understand him. After being affirmed by a fellow brother in christ, Hill writes
"with that gesture, and hundreds of others like it that I have received from fellow Christians, I have sensed God's love in a way that perhaps I would not have been able to in any other way. The remedy for loneliness- if there is such a thing this side of God's future- is to learn, over and over again, to do this: to feel God's keeping presence embodied in the human members of the community of faith, the church."
Now that I am home, and my time with my team feels like a lifetime ago, I can look at the page in my journal where I taped in my Truths sheet. I can read them and know that I am not a slave to the lies that the world tells me, that I am free from them. That I am redeemed by my God that loves me through my flaws and my insecurities. My God that seeks after me daily, that surrounds me in community and covers me in love. My God that paid the ultimate price for me. That is my worth.
I have found such beautiful, encouraging community in the past year. God has brought people into my life that have been intentional with me, people that have wanted to really know me. People that have poured into me in ways I don't think they even realize. People that have been quietly, but constantly teaching me to love myself well.
As a 20 year old
I can't open a magazine without being told what to wear, or how to act, or "how to get the guy."
Social Media has me constantly seeking the approval of my peers, because we all know that if you didn't get enough likes on that photo or that status, it just wasn't pretty enough, good enough, funny enough.
In a society raised on Happily-ever-afters and Romantic Comedies,
There are days, the majority, that the world leaves me self conscious. That cause me to question who I am. But I'm not like her. I don't look that that. I'm just not as smart as her. Days that the world does what the world does best; knocks me down. But when I'm letting my days be dictated by the world, the flip side isn't much better. When the pages of a magazine tell me I'm doing okay, or my 'followers' really like what I've been doing that day, or that cute guy at the coffee shop compliments me, I'm left thinking that this is where my worth lies. These are the things that are important, that define me.
As a 20 year old in todays world I
Through the community I have been so blessed to have found, I have been slowly shedding lies about myself. Lies I have believed for too long.
While I was in India my team and I wrote out a list of lies that we believe about ourselves. It wasn't hard to fill my page. The strange thing about it was, I was acknowledging that they were lies. As I wrote each one on my page under the heading Lies, I knew that they weren't true... but I still believed them. I still measured myself by what they said.
We were then given a fresh sheet of paper with the heading Truths. We took every lie, and wrote the truth to it. The truths that, at least in my case, I really didn't believe. The truths did not flow as easily from my pen as the lies had. Even as I sat in a room with ten girls that loved me, and wanted to pour into me, to affirm me, the enemy was still in my ear.
We took turns standing in front of the rest of the girls on our team and read aloud our truths. Saying, not only out loud but in front of other people, positive things that we didn't necessarily believe about ourselves was hard. Really hard. Tearing down lies that have deep rooted themselves in you, is painful.
But it was also freeing. To know that you can say those things, that somewhere inside you they do ring true. To know that ten other women, your sisters in christ, heard you affirm yourself and love yourself and that are fighting the same battle along side you.
I am a young Christian woman whose worth is in the Lord. I am a young Christian woman who is constantly told that that is not enough, that the world
The past year God has blessed me with unbelievable community. Community that has accepted me and loved me and is showing me that those truths I don't fully believe about myself are just that. Truths. God gave us community to experience his love.
In his beautifully written, somewhat controversial book Washed and Waiting, Wesley Hill speaks a lot about how important community is. Hill struggles a lot with insecurities and understanding his worth in a world that doesn't always understand him. After being affirmed by a fellow brother in christ, Hill writes
"with that gesture, and hundreds of others like it that I have received from fellow Christians, I have sensed God's love in a way that perhaps I would not have been able to in any other way. The remedy for loneliness- if there is such a thing this side of God's future- is to learn, over and over again, to do this: to feel God's keeping presence embodied in the human members of the community of faith, the church."
Now that I am home, and my time with my team feels like a lifetime ago, I can look at the page in my journal where I taped in my Truths sheet. I can read them and know that I am not a slave to the lies that the world tells me, that I am free from them. That I am redeemed by my God that loves me through my flaws and my insecurities. My God that seeks after me daily, that surrounds me in community and covers me in love. My God that paid the ultimate price for me. That is my worth.
My wonderful, hilarious, dysfunctional team.
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