My Worth in Christ

By: Anna Huss

            I ran into the bathroom crying.  I didn’t care who saw me run across the lunchroom.  I didn’t care that what she said was true.  I just cried.  This time and many times before when I could not handle the truth that I, good student, Christian girl, goody-goody, quiet child, was… imperfect. 

            That day in the fifth grade, I was sitting at the lunch table with the girls that I had known forever.  We decided to play a “game”.  To begin the “game” one of my friends went around and said one thing about each of us that we needed to, as she worded it, “work on”.  She got to me and I was sweating.  My imperfection was about to be revealed.  I felt vulnerable.  She stood up and looked at me from across the table.

            “Anna,” she began, “you are too sensitive.  You care too much about what people think.”  These words stung and I couldn’t deal with it.  I did what I had done so many times before.  I ran.

I wouldn’t have said it then, but the truth is, this minor incident was one of many that revealed to me the inescapable reality that I am flawed.

I was born into a fairly Christian home and did “Churchy” things.  I identified myself by being involved in activities like bible camp and declared my favorite bible verse as Matthew 7:13, “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate.  The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way.  But the gateway to life is and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”  I asked Jesus to come into my life when I was in the third grade and was determined to go through that narrow gate.  Christians, to me, were perfect.  They had to be.  I was a Christian and, because I always wanted to be the best, I wanted to be the “best” Christian. 

This led me down the road of insecurity, over-sensitivity, and anxiety.  

Like everyone, I could not live up to a perfect image and, as a result, I worried about everything I did.  When somebody merely alluded to the idea that I had faults, I found myself worrying about my worth.  I loved Jesus and thought that in order for God to really love me back, I should make myself perfect—worthy of love.  I was going through a cycle where the more I experienced anxiety, the more worried about myself I would become.  Christians, I thought, shouldn’t suffer from these problems. 

One day, I was reading my bible and came across a passage that said, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous.”  This spoke directly to me.  I realized that Christians are not perfect.  Like everyone else, Christians are sinners; they are broken.  What makes Christians different is that they are people who admit that they are incapable without God.  Nobody is perfect, but God loves us all anyway.  In fact, God loves each of us so much that he was willing to send Jesus, the only perfect person, into the world to die as a sacrifice for all the stupid, silly, sins we make. 

I learned that my efforts to be good should not be done in order to be the “best” Christian or to “get on God’s good side”; He loves us no matter what.  Now, I am constantly reminded that my worth does not come from being the “best”, or getting good grades or praise from friends.  My worth comes from God and he says that I am good enough just the way He made me.