by Sara McCann
In every season, there is a time for happiness and there is a time for sadness. There is a time for breakage and a time for healing. Unfortunately, sadness and breakage were unloving friends of mine that seemed to always interfere with my life. I’ve been broken, re-stitched, and broken again time after time. Being a Christian girl in an unchristian world, I was judged every second by people who didn’t know or understand me. I was fourteen years old.
I truly did not like who I was.
Pretty, funny, smart, good enough, and worthy were never the words I believed were on my list of descriptions. With the help of some uncaring friends and a vast insecurity problem, I was on a downward spiral that led me to believe that being myself wasn’t good enough. I picked bits and pieces up of things and people I saw, and before I knew it I had made a mask that fit so perfectly on my face. The devil made it seem faultless.
I decided that saying and doing things that weren’t mine to do or say was better than living with my insecurity problem. The mask was always on, and I kept hidden from the people who I thought would never love me, much less, like me. This just led me into a deeper depression and a deeper need for the Lord. Countless times I was angry at God for making me so unhappy and making me into a person I didn’t want to be.
In time, I began to feel ashamed of what I had been doing and the way I had been living. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t think about anything else, other than what a fake I was. When I stopped being angry at myself and God, I took off the mask and fell to my knees on wooden floors, and I realized that I was completely exposed. I was vulnerable and broken.
After that, I shied away from social media and focused on creating. I stopped typing and clutched my hand around a pen and started writing what was in my heart. I had my head between my knees and my nose in a bible, praying that God would help me through this time of confusion.
He did. I rose from my bones.
“Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.” (Ezekiel 37: 9-10)
Your worth is not defined by your outer appearance or the mistakes you’ve made. Throughout my life I questioned my worth and longed for a different life. However, this experience had made me see my worth; I am beautiful, smart, and good enough. I am now sixteen and understand that I was created to live the life that Christ had laid out for me. As I have learned my worth, I have been blessed to work with the Good Women Project and I will continue to spread the worth of women everywhere and anywhere; one prayer and one blog post at a time.
