Valuable? Me? That's not really something I've ever thought myself to be.
After working my way through this beautiful book called, Love Life Again, by Tracie Miles, I came away with many, many new insights and lessons to learn under my belt. It has reconnected me with the practise of gratitude on the daily and I have felt light begin to shine on dark places of my heart and mind that have long been hidden away. But, to believe that I am valuable...That one is hard.
I began this blog journey to "sort out" myself. To have some regular creativity in my life and with a secret hope that it would "become" something. But deep down, I truly believed I had nothing to offer those around me. After all, who am I to say that what I know has value?
I have always struggled with using the word valuable, when talking about myself. I have long thought of it to be in the same family as vain, and "tooting my own horn". That I somehow must think I am better than someone else if I shared the giftings that God has blessed me with an outward way. The enemy of my soul, he likes that lie. He has so enjoyed tormenting my mind over believing I am nothing. Believing that I can only show talent, or gifts, in secret, because if I share it, I am a vain-being and people will not like me if I share that part with them.
Tracie Miles' has divided her book into many topics of growing with God so we can get back to a place of pure love for life the way that God had intended. Each chapter deals with hard things, and is all based on solid God ground. John 10:10, is the verse she has based her book on, "I came so they can have a real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of". I always associated this verse with negative thoughts on the "health and wealth" circuit of christianity. And perhaps that is sometimes how it is used. And so whenever a person references this verse, I become wary. I am skeptical to how they will interpret this verse. Because honestly, I don't think that God's best for us, is always, more money and better health. If you know my story, you'll know that health is not always something my household has had, and it wasn't because we were "bad" or because we didn't "believe" enough It was because God knew we needed Him. And He carried us through our daughter's illnesses so we could see His Holy power at work.
So getting back to self-worth and self-value. God, He values us. He values me. And that IS enough! That is what He wants us to know. It's why Christianity exists! Jesus Christ died, because God loved us that much. So to say, I have no value, it is throwing the gift of my salvation and the gift of love that God has for me, directly back into His face. For years, I have struggled and believed the enemy's lies. Believed that God had left me, that I had no value or gifts that could be counted as such. But in truth, I have realized I do. The scales from my eyes have slowly been peeling away these past few months, preparing me for this book. Preparing me for the words that God placed in Tracie's heart. So me, and others like me, could find someone who had been there and has seen it too. One who has come away from it all stronger because finally, they decided to believe in the truth that God had for them.
I want to love my life again. And that is where I needed to get to. Depression and constant anxiety have held me down. Have kept me unaware and hurting. Lies filling my mind so that I couldn't hear the voice of God calling me back. And I am not saying that I have "arrived", I am far from that. But I have seen the glimmer of Him again. I have heard His voice again. And it has helped me to get back up again. To start searching for the little girl in myself who somewhere along the way began to believe she was nothing.
This book has given me tools, simple, black and white, plain as day challenges to push forward and fight for myself again. God never stopped fighting for me...Which is why I am still here. But I stopped fighting for me. I stopped believing in myself. I stopped loving myself.
And that brings me to another hard thing taught in one of Tracie's chapter's. To love one's self. "Rather than obsessing over who I wasn't, which is what I had been doing for years, I began to ponder who I really was. I had felt unimportant and like I didn't measure up for so long that it took awhile to rediscover my value and start liking and accepting who God had created me to be ". Sound familiar? Those are Tracie's words, but they are also my story. Over and over again I connected with the words she wrote of her life and her story. Hearing my own echo in them. I have seen the light, that to believe I am worth love and such, I NEED to love myself first. And my starting point for that is to know that God loves me, created me and has saved me, all because I. Am. Worth. Something.
There is so much wisdom in Tracie's book. I have underlined and tagged so much, it looks like a college textbook. And I am so thankful that God brought me this "read". I am not sure who out there will find this post. But perhaps you have connected with some of the things I wrote. I want to be the first to tell you. Whether you believe in God or not, He created you too. He loves you too. And you are worth far more than you could even imagine. (I know, I struggle believing that too, but I am making a choice today and will continue each day to believe it and trust that God has me here for a reason. That he cares. That I am worth life and joy.)
