chasing self-worth

So, a bit about me: my background is not spectacular, new, or in any way ground-breaking. I grew up in an abusive home that severely hindered my ability to believe in myself. In response, God put opportunities in my path so I’d be able to learn on my own, and discover I had something big to give this world.

It took me awhile to realize my life-pattern, once I grew into my own. That moment was at fourteen years old, when I found myself caught in the same moment for the hundredth time: my father, angry, advancing toward me. Only this time, I wasn’t trapped in the web - I stood up to face him, leaving my fear behind me on that couch. I didn’t yell, couldn’t have if I wanted to, all I did was stand. Just like that, I wasn’t caught anymore. That moment never happened to me again.

After that day I was left with an empty feeling, a hole I needed to fill with something unknown. I graduated from High School, and eager to leave that place behind, I just scraped by with passing grades. It wasn’t because I struggled in school, more that my grades matched my motivation. Out of high school I went straight into the workforce, and that is when my search for self-worth began.

 By age twenty-five, I had had over twenty different jobs. I would stay at a job long enough to prove I could be the best, then promptly lose interest and look for something else. Again, it took me way too long to realize that I was just looking for some sense of self-worth. It didn’t happen for me in the workforce, nor in the pile of demoralizing, damaging relationships I put myself through around the same time. However, I did oddly enough manage to learn confidence from those experiences. I needed that to help me make some of the most important decisions of my life. The first decision: that my faith was the most important thing to me, and I needed to transform my focus into a more eternal perspective. The second: to marry Emma. Done.

After getting married, I quickly realized the things that made me the most happy were the times I shared with her and our growing family. Slowly, a new hunger grew within me. A feeling that I really just might be meant for something, that I had something really big to offer this world. I started to dream again, to see what my life could be if I let myself become the person my Heavenly Father wants me to be. The person He already knows I am, if I could only be humble enough to let him show me how to do it.

The moment I started to make decisions based on my dreams, a lot of really interesting things started to happen. People were brought into my life who would show me a new way of caring for and providing for my family. It was something meaningful to me, something I believed could really change thousands of people’s lives, with service and self-improvement. So I got started. And a miracle happened: I really enjoyed the work. Impossible! How could this be! It provided unique opportunities to build close relationships with people; I started making connections and seeing the fruits of the work… however, there’s a but (and spoiler: the but is almost always me). I was very much an amateur, and as such I made a lot of mistakes. Things gradually got more difficult, and I slowly distanced myself from it, sinking back into my old routine of collecting more jobs. However, it seems Father wasn’t finished. Three years and four lay-offs later, it was clear He wouldn’t allow me to waste any more time. He already showed me what I needed to do… and after I searched him out for answers, he even told me what I needed to do. So it is time to go back to work. I have lives to bless, including but definitely not limited to my own family’s.

This time, I’ll do it his way though. That way, I cannot fail.

Choice

Not all stories begin well... Mine does though, so that's lucky.

I often describe my childhood with much pride and gratitude, but that wasn't always the case. My current view of the past I attribute to a lucky mixture of rapid emotional and spiritual maturing. The journey to get to this point of growth, the place where you can look back and see the moment your life changed, for better or worse, is something everybody can and should do. The person you’ll find you’ve become will almost always surprise you. The future is always a grey area, and I believe only faith can really control where we are headed. Otherwise, frankly, it’s more of a crap-shoot for most of us. I understand I have so much more to learn, and so much more growth to undergo, but that's kind of exciting. I have dreams. Since I drive this vessel of a body, I can be in charge of its direction… to some extent, at least. There is always the unknown. And isn’t that great? The unknown is probably the biggest reason people even try at all; what's the point of struggling, of fighting to achieve our dreams when we already know the outcome of that war?

Dreaming was never something I did a lot of growing up. Aside from the typical "I wish I could fly!" stuff, of course. Maybe it was a side effect of growing up in a somewhat abusive home. When you are told often as a child that you will amount to nothing, you start believing it. And so I simply survived. I think survival was the theme of my life's direction for a long time. From early self-awareness to a point in my early twenties, I simply existed. I worked only as hard as absolutely necessary to get by, never more. I squeezed in as much fun as I could (a universal must for young advancing humans), but never excelled or left any lasting mark. 

A spiritual awakening changed everything for me. Some of the building blocks of that awakening included making peace with my dying father, getting my heart broken once (or more), and problems with addiction.

I’m not sure what it is about pain and suffering that forces us to make that choice: To break free and leap beyond yourself, and become someone you didn’t know you could be. Or, alternatively, to sink to a new depth of lifelessness, a self-destruction previously thought impossible. Tough as it is, “choice” is the only word for it. I have seen it many times in my life already. Two separate people may go through many or all of the same trials in their separate lives; one becomes a vibrant, optimistic, happy person, while the other is a miserable wretch. In the wise words of my beautiful wife, “Happiness is a choice, not a right.” I think that that is absolutely true. So much of what and who we are comes down to daily choice. Everything else is noise, just distractions we can use to blame our state of mind (exempting, of course, the sick and afflicted.)

So that’s what I did. I made a choice. To stop believing the lies I was first told as a child, and then the same lies I continued telling myself. A simple one it might seem, but not for me. It opened doors for me I never knew existed!

That choice, that beginning is what led me to all of the amazing things in my life today.

The first step is choice. You always have agency, and you always will.

So choose.