The Feel Good Folder

I keep a secret email folder in my work inbox. It's named "Feel Good" and I tuck away words of encouragement, thanksgiving, and victory. Some of the emails are letters from family of patients my hands got to care for, and some have nothing at all to do with me. I found my way to the secret folder today and let myself stay there awhile because encouragement is good for my self esteem, and I suppose I needed some of that today. What does it mean to say that a person has "low self esteem"? Perhaps, simply, it means that they're a human? Because everyone has parts of themselves that they don't much like, and who ever lived without a single shred of self-doubt? To be alive is to be vulnerable, and to keep choosing a tender heart is to bear boldly the thousand scars that declare your humanity.

It has been a season of wrestling hard with insecurity and discontentment over desires that have not come to pass. A season of self-doubt and questioning and wondering what I'm worth. Desire always speaks lies  when the object of desire is disordered. Today as I searched the Feel Good folder for some self esteem, I remembered with urgency that I am a daughter beloved and that Jesus is the only object worthy of my desire. I don't need the Feel Good Folder anymore to tell me that I'm worth something. 

You are so loved. Child of God, you are the prize, purchased with blood. The cries of a baby born in a stable sound a war-cry of love. And with each gasping breath on the cross, the King of Heaven makes a choice to stay nailed there. To win you back and to have your heart. To truly see the King is to be utterly consumed by Him. He takes His rightful place on the throne as the sole object of your desire not by force, but by love. There's not room for anything else when you're buried beneath this relentless onslaught of perfect love.

As long as there is breath, He will be the only thing worthy of my affection. Desires fall away as the One Treasure comes into view, eyes blazing with love for me. I'm ashamed that I've loved anything other. What will it take for me to get it? It took His death, and I'm already forgiven because He rose. I'm overwhelmed by the gift I've just unwrapped: an inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven, a right to kinship with the King. My heart is like a child's heart, full of awe and wonder that I get to be a Child of the Living God. And so are you.