Worth It

Phew! This one's a doozy. Lately I've been contemplating 'worth.' One Dictionary defines it as "good or important enough to justify (what is specified)." And that word "enough" is the one that often defeats me. I've had this discussion with many of my friends and, most often, the first question that pops into our heads, being the women that we are, when we experience some form of rejection is, "Am I not worth   ______" And then of course we begin to think about what "enoughs" that we aren't and how we fall short and all of our faults seem to smack us in the face and kick us in the ribs. 

"Am I not worth pursuing?" 

"Am I not worth a 5 second response?"

"Am I not worth a 10 cent Rose?" 

"Am I not worth the time?"

"Am I not worth a text/email/phone call"

"Am I not worth it?"

Those questions, and many very similar to those, have not only gone through my own head a billion times during the course of my life, from the other women I've heard from and talked to, the same questionings of their worth have gone through theirs. If only they were a simple passing thought as forgettable as the 2 minute meet-n-greets we do at Salt every week. These questions might start as a thought, but they quickly become knives and daggers and arrows that pierce through the precious hearts  and souls of us girls. I know it drives guys nuts. One forgotten thing of importance seems to turn into a big deal and the poor fellows are lost trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with this girl that she's all the sudden crying over something that didn't seem like such a big deal. 

So, let me break this down for you...not that I think that terribly many male units out there will read this..but if they do, they need to know this. Try to picture a girls heart as a vase and the true her is the flowers. When the vase has water, the flowers thrive and open up and look beautiful. If you think of love as being the water, you know that when a girls heart is fully loved, the girl will fully be herself as beautiful as the flower God made her to be. Pursuing her is like watering her vase. Granted, we do need to keep in mind that God is the ultimate gardener and only His living water will truly satisfy this flower.

So, when you neglect your precious flower, it wilts, it's not as pretty, and it wonders what it is about it that it wasn't worth maintaining. Maybe it didn't smell as nice, maybe it was a daisy and not as pretty as a rose, maybe it was just too much work. What ever reason, I don't think there was ever an explanation that made it hurt any less. 

Last night our connection group kicked off our first meeting for this Spring Semester. I co-lead with my two closest friends but on account I had all the notes on last night's lesson/the discussion questions, I was the head-leader. although there were 5 girls not present, there were still over a dozen young women there. I don't think I was worried about it til we were half-way through and it was hard to get discussion going. Some seemed bored, not all of them knew my story or what I'm like on a regular basis, and it seemed like one thing after another told me that I was doing a terrible job and that I was just making a fool of myself and everyone was feeling uncomfortable. As I told my co-leaders/friends this on our drive home, they both seemed a little shock. They were both like, "What?? Where is that coming from?? You did great! I thought it went really well!" 

So where did it come from? Let me tell you. In Genesis 3, way back at the beginning of all things, we see how Satan began to whisper those thoughts of self-doubt into the mind of the most perfectly made woman of all times. When he told Eve that by eating the fruit her eyes would be opened and that she would be like God in knowing good and evil, he made her question if she was "good enough" with out knowing the things God knew. Was she good enough just as she was? When she questioned this, she doubted it and her worth and then she fell into sin. And then, of course, the rest of us women get to experience the same thing on top of this wonderful curse to desire a husband. That curse is part of who we are now. We want a man to love us and care for us and provide for us. We want someone to think we are "worth it." 

While Satan stands to accuse us all day long and tries to defeat us in everyway possible by destroying the core of our very being, Christ is at the right hand of God interceding on our behalf. I picture it being much like the scene from one of my favorite Dr. Who episodes where The Doctor and Rory have a little encounter after Rory's girlfriend, Amy, has been killed.

Rory: Can you help her, is there anything you can do?

The Doctor: Yeah, probably, if I had the time.

Rory: The time?!?

The Doctor: All of Creation has just been wiped from the sky. Do you now know how many lives now never happened? All the people who never lived. Your girlfriend isn't more important than the whole Universe.

Rory: SHE IS TO ME!!! {he hits him}

And that is how we come to catch a glimpse of our heavenly father. It is how we know we were made in His likeness. Because, while we carry this emptiness in our hearts and a longing to be "good enough" to be pursued and chased after, He stands there with His arms out spread asking, "What about me? Am I worth it?" Whilst we run around with our vases trying to find a sink deep enough to fit it under a working faucet, He's standing there with a garden hose wishing we'd ask Him to fill us up.

And when we trust someone to fill our vase and then they don't and we're left with wilting flowers and dead leaves and stems that don't seem to absorb water they way they used to, he patiently and lovingly clips away the things that died, trims the stems to the healthy parts and replaces the flowers that lost their petals. But we look at our wilted, failed, unwanted, and discarded selves and Satan stands there to tells us we are not worth pursuing, we are not worth a conversation, we are not worth the time, or what ever else it is, and Christ in all his heroic anger punches Satan in the jaw and yells, "SHE IS TO ME!"

So what about Christ? Is He worth it? Is He worth pursuing? Is he worth a 5 second response or 10 cents dropped in the offering plate? Is He worth a whole conversation or the 5 minutes it takes to read a passage? Is He worth your life? Your surrender?

He fights so much for us, but do we fight for Him? Do we chase after Him? Do we love Him and admire His beauty? 

Last night as I was last minute trying to find more Bible verses on why we should pursue Christ, I found myself reading over the list of verses that I've been clinging to lately. I pursue Christ because when I am afflicted in every way, I'm not crushed, not abandoned, not destroyed. 

I pursue Him because he renews my heart day by day. 

I pursue Him because He says He is my helper and I need not fear anything. 

I pursue Him because He wipes the tears from my eyes. He gives me joy in all circumstances. He heals my heart when I experience sorrow. He gives life to my heart when I've had the wind knocked out of me. 

I pursue Him because for all the times that I have strayed away, been stuck in sin, grown distant, come to a point of brokenness, He was there and He faithfully whispered to my heart that I was worth it when I couldn't see how that could be. Never once has he left me or forsaken me. Never once have I cried to Him and He didn't come rescue me. He has never left me in a pit or dropped me in a fire. Not only does He bind up my broken heart, He uses pieces of His own heart to patch of the places that are no longer intact. 

So when the accuser comes and tells me that God is not worth being the weirdo in class or sleeping on an old mattress in an other country that has a thriving mosquito population for the sake of sharing the gospel, or when he says Christ is not worth losing a friend over or sacrificing a good grade, when he says Christ is not worth saying "no" to the pleasures of this world when it could be the only chance I'll ever get, my answer is, "He's worth it to me!"