Beautiful and Worthy

Today I woke up feeling anxious. I teach a Grief Recovery class tonight and I will be sharing my relationship graph in front of the class. It’s funny, I’ve been teaching GR for almost 2 1/2 years and I still have times when I feel scared to share. It’s one thing to share it all one on one, it’s another to share in front of a group of people.

I think part of it comes from the belief that I held about myself for so many years. That if people really knew me, knew the underneath part then they wouldn’t like me. That I would be rejected. I grew up believing that something was seriously wrong with me. Something that I tried so hard to fix as an adult and never could. The more I tried to fix what was wrong with me, the more I discovered wrong things. There was something deep inside that said if I could just be perfect then no one will ever hurt me again.

I remember one time I attended an intense personal growth seminar in northern California. It was 7 days on a ranch with a large group of people. It was way out of my comfort zone. The work we did was relational and experiential. The training ground for moving forward in life with fear as opposed to running from it or waiting to not feel afraid. It’s a good thing I attended that seminar because I would have waited a life time to not feel afraid.

There were several coaches and professionals that interacted with us through the process. On one of the days we were outside the entire day. We did things that we had to wear safety equipment for and be roped up. Oh, and I’m afraid of heights. So I’m about to do one of the scariest things I’ve ever done and climb this super high telephone pool and stand on the top and then jump for a trapeze. Before I went, one of the professionals had a conversation with me and asked me how I was feeling. I said afraid. He asked of what, and I said “I’m afraid that I’ll fail, I’m afraid that I wont be able to make it or that I’ll miss the trapeze.” He then asked me two questions that changed my entire life… He said “Sandi, can you prove that God is real?” I said “No”. He said “Can you prove that someone loves you?” I said “No”. He said “Then how do you know?”. I said “You just have to believe.” He said “Exactly. Sandi, you can’t prove that you’re worthy, you just have to believe. This is just a pole, a trapeze and some ropes, it doesn’t hold your worth and neither does anything else.”

I will say that I climbed that pole, jumped and got one hand on the trapeze. I wasn’t able to hang on and the safety ropes caught be beautifully. Yet what that man said to me right before I went was something that changed the course of my life. I realized at that moment that I had exhausted myself trying to prove something that couldn’t be proven. And until I believed it, nothing would ever be enough. It helped me to take my fears, hurts and questions to the only One who could answer the burning question in my heart. And for every question, every hurt, every disappointment and every negative belief He answered me with a resounding yes. Yes, you are worthy, yes you are beautiful and yes you are valuable because God of the Most High says so. That’s I belief I chose to live in!