I Am Valuable, My Life is Worth Living

I don't love myself.

It's a realization I've made during the past weeks, or perhaps months or even years.  I don't love myself or find value in myself, and so I haven't been taking care of myself.

I'm not usually the biggest fan of Joyce Meyer, but over the weekend I came upon some words she wrote that spoke to my soul.  We can't love ourselves until we are healed emotionally, and we can't heal emotionally until we accept God's profound and unconditional love.

The depression demon usually visits me a handful of times throughout the month, generally in relation to a combination between where I am in my hormonal cycle and how I've been eating.  Tonight I was trying on some outfits, and all I could think about is how fat I am.  I looked in the mirror at how big (objectively speaking) I've gotten in so many places, and it made me feel totally unattractive and undesirable.  Coupled with those feelings is my already low self-esteem resulting from knowledge of my diseases, and the belief that I'm abnormal and tainted and not someone who anyone would want to marry; I cry in desperation, feeling like an alien creature stuck in a life she doesn't want, but incapable of having anything more or different.

In reality, I'm only 20 pounds heavier than my "normal," a result of hormone imbalances, cancer, and a puttered-out thyroid.  However, I think much of my self-worth hinged on my thinness, and now that it's gone (objectively speaking), I don't feel good about myself.  Before that, I found value in academic performance and achievement.  Before that, the perceived strength and quality of my faith in God.  I'm not in school and I've moved away from my legalistic Christianity and into something that feels less certain and secure (the loss of legalism is a good thing, the loss of security is not such a good thing).  Without my previous appearance, or academic accolades, or the recognition of a mature faith journey, I no longer have anywhere to find value.  Except the value that God has inherently created me with.

So much of my life has been about performing and doing and achieving that I missed out on many years of just be-ing.  When I was a missionary in China, for the first time in my life I was surrounded by a team of people who spent time doing things they enjoyed, simply for pleasure.  That concept was so foreign to me.  I didn't even know what I really liked doing.  I remember starting to spend afternoons outside with my camera, and then I bought some paint supplies at a bookstore and painted some pictures for the first time ever, just because I could.  I bought fiction books.  I downloaded music and learned about different singers and bands.  I began to exercise and cook healthy foods.  I became less focused on the appearance of my life to other people, and made choices that brought joy to my heart.

I'm not sure what's happened in the past four years, except I think that somehow with my medical diagnoses I began to give up on my life a little bit.  I remember when I was first told I had Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and probably PCOS, my immediate thought was, "Well, I guess I'm not getting married."  Somehow a disease made me abnormal, and that abnormality made me unlovable, and to be unlovable meant I had no value.  I think that I've been caught in the web of this pattern of thinking since that day in the beginning of 2010.  I am abnormal, so I have no value.

It's difficult to come to terms with the physical ailments you've been born with--to know that God created you with these proverbial thorns in your flesh.  I know that we all have our weaknesses and idiosyncrasies and problems, but somehow because I now see that I am not and can never be perfect, I have lost all sense of self-worth.  Perfectionism is such a painful and exhausting addiction.

But then I think about how much God has created me to be able to offer to the world.  My emotional and spiritual and physical struggles are but fodder for the possibility of ministering to others--of feeding God's sheep.  My suffering makes me more real and authentic and genuine (I hope), so that I can be a source of comfort and respite and truth to the people around me.  And He has given me gifts, as a human be-ing, that are unique only to me.  And not only gifts, but a calling to which no other person has been called.

I think about so many people He has placed in my life, people who love and value and appreciate me for who I am and nothing I've done.  People who have loved me through the ups and downs of my autoimmune disease, the good days when I've been kind and grateful and warm, and the bad days when I've been depressed and cranky and cold.  People who have loved me through my cancer, showering on me their support by way of an outpouring of financials gifts and notes of encouragement.  People who have continued to seek out relationships with me, even when that seeking out is very much one-sided.  All of that love and support and seeking speaks volumes about the love of God, and if the people in my life have valued me in this way, how much more does my Abba Father lavish His value and love and pride on this little creature He has created--me?

Earlier this year, I began to see a counselor to help me with PTSD from a near-fatal car accident I was in two years ago.  During our first session, she gave me a list of positive self-affirmations and negative self-talk.  We discussed some of the phrases from the list that I want to come to believe to be true.  I no longer see the counselor, but I have since begun writing these positive phrases in my journal.  I think there is a lot of power in claiming these affirmations in my own writing in my own personal journal.  I also began to rewrite some of the affirmations as truths about God (i.e., God is in control; God can be trusted).

I haven't been very consistent about going to the gym since my cancer surgery, but tonight, amidst a mini emotional meltdown, I knew I just needed to get out of the house and focus my mind on something other than my own unhappiness.  As my endorphins kicked in and I actually began to feel the cloud of depression lifting, I began to say to myself, over and over:

My life is worth living.

And then I added to that:

I am valuable.

And so I pumped those elliptical pedals and chanted to myself, "I am valuable.  My life is worth living.  I am valuable.  My life is worth living."

I have begun to make a list of things I want to commit to doing every day and/or every week in order to nourish my body and soul.  If I feel trapped in my life and want things to go differently, I am the one that needs to take steps to change what is changeable.  I am going to start taking care of myself because I am valuable, and my life is worth living.

He made me valuable.  He gave me a life worth living.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.