I have trouble being still. Part of this is wanting to see and experience as much as I can of the world, and part of it is to distract myself from pain or occasional self-criticism.
I think that's why it's so hard for me to accept sometimes that I don't have to earn God's approval. Through Jesus I already have it but I still can forget. And when God is gracious to me after I know I've been particularly lousy, I can still feel confused about getting what I know I don't deserve.
Jarrie Thebert once told me "You go around looking for a thumbs up from everyone you meet. But there's only one thumbs up that really matters." Actually she didn't say that to me ONCE. She said it to me over and over and over because it never seemed to stick.
She would tell me to ask God how HE saw me. But I wouldn't - I was too busy doing all the things I thought would make me a person worth something, and I was too afraid of what the answer might be.
This year I stopped doing almost all the things I thought made me myself, in order to pursue a big plan and a new life using a job position that takes just about all my energy and time. So, I didn't travel anywhere interesting, and a lot of my projects and activities and even some relationships fell away. In the summer, I sat in my house, late at night, frustrated at my life which seemed to have come to a complete stand still.
"Ok Lord." I said "I'm here. How do you see me? What do you see when you see me?"
I sat with paper and pencil.
"A jewel." I heard.
"That must have been from me." I thought. "God wouldn't say that about me."
I wrote it down, but I was skeptical. I decided I'd ask God again later, to see if I could get a more honest answer out of Him.
Not long after this, a friend's relative that I'd just met said she had a word for me from the Lord. She said:
"You have something very unique that the Lord has given you that He will use for his glory. You are not to compare yourself to anyone else because your life will not look like theirs. When His gift is shining in you, you will be like a jewel. Like a multi-faceted diamond or garnet."
God Himself brings us our value and identity, even, or especially, when we feel empty, messed up or useless. I realize now that none of the worthiness for that comes from me: I don't make myself.
These portraits I painted about 4 years apart. I think of them as portraits of spirit or emotion, and I painted both of them without realizing how much they said about me.
The first portrait is a person who has a head full of so many things- thoughts and ideas splayed out in every direction - searching for connection. But these things aren't life-giving to her: she's weighed down and her face is blank, flat and tired. I painted this in early 2012, when I had just come back to the Lord and was still working so hard to earn my value.
The second portrait I painted at the end of this year. The posture and expression is completely different from the first - when I look at it I see someone who has had so many burdens lifted off of her. I didn't really think of it as a personal portrait until it was finished, but I thought a lot about the jewel story while I was painting it. That story is one of the continual ways the Lord has been working to change my mind and identity.
Slowly it's sinking in that my work to give myself value, to make something good of myself, could never increase the infinite love God already feels toward me.
