No Longer Unworthy
By Jessica Brodie
For most of my life, I’ve felt I had to prove myself. I’m not sure where this comes from. The Enneagram personality tests say I’m a type three, the Achiever, and I think it’s an apt description. I always had plenty of love from my parents and teachers and others in my world, and I was raised in the church, so I always knew the love of Jesus intimately, yet for some reason a desperate sense of self-unworthiness has plagued me since my earliest days. I think the kids would call me a “try hard.”
In school, I had to give my all. I couldn’t just write a plain-old normal book report for English—I’d have to write my heart out. I couldn’t just hang out with a friend—I had to be completely on and “interesting” and 100 percent engaged in order for them to like me.
Later, when I discovered the powerful allure of boys and all things romance, I felt like I needed to be attractive at all times, flexible and easygoing and fun, to be “dateable.”
When I started my career, I had to stay late and go in early so I’d be seen as responsible, dedicated, worthy of employment and promotion. I had to do my very best in everything. And the worst part what that while on the surface it might have looked like I was honoring Colossians 3:23 with the way I lived my my life—"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters”—it was really something far more selfish and pitiful.
Deep down, I suspected that if I didn’t do all of this, I wouldn’t have any value. No one would want me around anymore. They wouldn’t love me, like me, want me to be their employee or friend or girlfriend. They’d see me for the fraud I surely was.
I’m not sure when that changed in me, but I’m certain it shifted when I became a mother, looking down at those precious little faces, and realizing they could care less about whether I had lipstick on, or my shirt was stained, whether I had written an impactful article that made the front page of the newspaper or delivered a spot-on speech that had the crowd on their feet in applause.
They just loved me. Period.
They loved me because they needed me, but they also just loved me. Just me, plain-old regular me, the real me behind closed doors.
In their love, I got a marginal sense of God’s perfect love.
Obviously, God’s love is very different from any kind of human relationship we can experience. Even the most perfect marriage or the most selfless mother-child bond pales in comparison. There’s been no sacrifice given on earth that could ever hold a candle to the sacrifice made when God gave his life for all of us—for me—on that cross at Calvary.
But tasting a little bit of that love in my children made me realize that genuine love doesn’t have anything to do with trying. Genuine love simply … is. And because of God‘s genuine love for me, I can call myself God’s precious daughter, one of many other daughters and sons across the world, all who belong to him.
I’m still an overachiever by nature, but these days it’s far less about a nagging sense of self-doubt or low worth and far more because I just really, really care about the things I’m doing, whether that’s writing or speaking or making dinner for my family.
I’ve realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that my worth rests entirely in Christ Jesus. I belong to him, and because of that, I am worthy. It’s not because of anything I could ever do, but because he loves me. I have worth because of him.
And guess what? You do, too.
We don’t ever have to worry about pleasing other people, winning first place, or any other human accolades. At the end of it all, it’s just us and God, souls united, one in the Spirit.
Today, look around at your life and how you are relating to others. Are you loving like Jesus? Are you shining his light in the world so others might know him?
Are you remembering to love yourself, and others, because he first loved us?
He loves us completely. And we need to remember that.
