How One Sentence Destroyed my Self-Worth.

I was sitting at the kitchen counter silently eating my lunch with the little boy I nanny when I had an important realization. It smacked so hard in the face that you would think I was a college girl who just found out that iPhone 6s were being handed out for free with pumpkin spiced lattes at the local Starbucks.

I had been innocently listening to my Pandora station of Jesus jams when, without warning, I was sucked into an intense worship session. I wasn't raising my hands, swaying back and forth, or even singing aloud at all for that matter--I was watching a three year old smear peanut butter all over his face and in his hair. Yet without a doubt, it was the best worship to God I have experienced in quite a while. As a professional musician, I often have a hard time worshipping, too often distracted by thinking about the music itself... which adds to the irony that I was able to zone out entirely and worship in a way that I hadn't in a long time over PB&Js with a three year old.

See, I have been having a silent (and seemingly weird) struggle lately. I am in the sweetest season of my life that I have ever reached, as shown below:

• I am saved by Jesus Christ and will live eternally in Heaven.
• I have a really, REALLY awesome husband and we enjoy an enriching and satisfying marriage. 
• I have not one, but two jobs that I enjoy and make me feel respected, needed, and that I am using my talents for good. 
• Carter and I like where we live and we get to spend a lot of time together
• I have this crazy thing called FREE TIME, which has been a foreign idea for the last six years. (Note, six years ago is when I had the immense need to grow up very quickly.) I even have  a social life these days.

So WHY have I been struggling lately with doubt, dissatisfaction, self-hatred, and fear? WHY all of this, when my life is indisputably better than it ever has before? Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about my life at all--I don't have anything missing. Yet these negative feelings have been tearing me apart from the inside out. Why?

The simple answer is because I am a sinner who will always sin and this manifests all over my life in ugly ways. But... I think the honest answer goes a deeper than that. 

Going through life in suburban, middle-class, "always-happy" midwest USA leads to a lot of people consistently smiling at you and asking questions like, "how are you?" and, "what's new in your life?" These questions are generally asked with good intentions, but without any interest in an answer longer than one sentence. So, without realizing it, I had been placing the precarious weight of my self-worth on this itty bitty one sentence response that I--like everyone else--delivered countless times in an off-hand manner without much reflection. I needed an interesting and important answer, one that would make people mark "noteworthy person" in their mental address book. 

And in the last six years, I always had one. 

"My mom is in the hospital."

"Going to college! Yowza!"

"I am taking 21 credits and working part time and have an internship, so I am basically on the edge of implosion at any second."

"I got dumped and am now all about exerting a lot of effort into hating him/getting other people to hate him and love me instead so that I can feel validated."

"I just went through six months of complete renewal of my faith, self-empowerment, and have basically become an entirely different person."

"I got engaged!"

"I AM GETTING MARRIED IN ______ DAYS!!!!!"

"I am a newlywed and I NEED to tell you why it's the best thing that could literally EVER happen to anyone who has ever lived. Ever. Literally."

"I'm writing my thesis and would honestly rather choose death."

"I graduated!"

"I have a cool new job!"

But lately, these exciting answers have come to a screeching halt and all I really have to talk about is crockpot recipes, home improvement, going to the library, and other equally dull and totally lame topics. This lack of a shiny, exciting sentence was making me feel like I was no longer important to people and, therefore, less valuable as a person.

My life coming to a sweet plateau should have made me turn my eyes to heaven with gratitude, but instead I started casting around for new things to fill the space. My "sentence struggle" merely represented the more troublesome reality that I was refusing to allow God to be enough, for His mercy and grace to be my identity. Instead of showing others I was humbled by God blessing me with peace and stillness, I was choosing to be bitter and hardened. I was acting as though life had stolen something from me instead of realizing the reality--that everything I have was given to me by God. 

So while I was eating my lunch with my three year old buddy, a song by All Sons & Daughters--one that I know quite well--sang the line, "The heartbeat of my life is to worship in your light." It is a line I have pondered many times and have tried to write across my life. 

Was worshipping God the most important thing to me--my very heartbeat? Was it showing in my actions and my words... in my sentence? It wasn't, and that was the root of all my heartache and dissatisfaction. 

Sitting there enjoying our PB&Js, I instantaneously realized all of this upon hearing that All Sons & Daughters line. I suddenly started smiling insanely--enough that Colton looked at me in his sweet three year old way and asked, "What is happy?" I just laughed and responded, "everything, buddy. Just everything."

And it truly was.