What am I worth?

I have been thinking a lot lately about this question, “What am I worth?” It was a constant question for me through the first 40 years of my life.

Especially back in 2010 when I lost my teaching job because I couldn’t function well enough to work. I spent my life working up to that, and to be independent. What was I going to do? I lived, breathed, and spent basically all my time working. (Which by the way wasn’t healthy or what God wanted.)

My job was who I was…I was a teacher, a professional and it meant something to me. However, when it was gone, I had the feeling of well, what am I worth now?

“You are nothing,” was the answer that came to mind. You are nothing if you can’t work is what the world tells us. I heard many people talk about those people who sit and home and do nothing while the government pays for their life.

I can tell you that most everyone in that position doesn’t want to be there. They would rather be working and contributing to society.

However, when you can’t, or you lost your job as many did during COVID, you wonder what you are worth now that you aren’t what the world calls a working person.

Of course, they don’t realize how hard work in therapy is, or that your body hurts like an 80-year-old on many days, so the judgements are there. I have heard them all. Those statements make you feel even less like you are worth anything.

At a writer’s conference a few years ago one lady asked what my day job was and I said that I was actually on disability. She said, “So, what exactly do you do all day?”

I wanted to be sarcastic and say that I sit around and twiddle my thumbs, but instead I said, “I am healing.” She didn’t have a need to know anything other than that because I’d just met her.

However, the shame was there. The shame that I wasn’t worth anything. I had numerous conversations with my counselor about this and his answer was always the same. He would say, “You are working hard to heal, but also, your identity is not in your work or what you do, but in Christ.”

I argued that of course he said that because he was working, and he was a father etc., but he was adamant that his identity was in Christ.

So, over the past few years I have prayed about where I find my worth. This is where it led me. Most people struggle with their worth, but survivors struggle even more. We want that feeling of worth and identity in something because it is security.

If I have a job then life can’t fall apart. I am safe and secure. Of course, that is false, but yet the sense is there and we hold onto it.

It’s also hard to realize that God is good. It takes a lot of time to come to the realization after experiencing such evil as sexual trauma survivors have endured.

It takes time to realize that the evil in this world caused it. There’s a huge process there as well, but to stay on point here, we have to come to the realization for ourself that God is good.

God is good and He wants good things for me. He loves me. He sent His son to die for me. What helped me come to terms with all of this and realize it as truth was numerous things.

Coming to God and encountering Him in the quiet places, in public through others, and in relationships He’s brought into my life. Having safety in my earthly relationships helps me have that security in God. People that are my friends want good for me, and if they do then how much more does God?

So much more, my friends, so much more for you as well!

He loves each and every one of you more than we can begin to comprehend this side of heaven. It takes my breath away when I think that the all-powerful God wants good for each of us.

Truly nothing I do here on earth gives me my identity, but there is one thing that does. I am a child of God. He created me and then when I was 17, He saved me from my sinful self. He knows I screw up daily, yet He loves me anyway.

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John1:12-13

What are you worth? You are worth so much that God chose to create you. You are worth so much that the living God chose to send His son to die just for you, because He wants you to be with Him for all of eternity.

Here’s my prayer for you friends:

Father God,

I pray that you bless each person that reads this post today. If they don’t know You and Your amazing love I pray they encounter You by confessing they need You in their life. Place people in their lives to show Your love and goodness. Let each person reading this know they are a treasure that You created and love beyond measure and that their identity is in You.

In Jesus Powerful Name,

Amen

Lauren Daigle says the truth beautifully in this song, You Say.

© 2021 Susan M. Clabaugh. All Rights Reserved.