If your worth depends on affirmation as much as I’ve allowed mine to, then unless you actually get it as often as you think you need it, you probably wonder as much as I do what value the journey of your life holds. The few voices that do affirm you’ve offered them something, while immensely appreciated, are somehow never loud enough to drown out the deafening silence of everyone else. Those who don’t really know, or care, what you’re talking about. Those who might care but don’t say it. Everyone who probably thinks you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a petri dish for self-doubt. Until you make peace with the fact that since the only person living your life is you, the only person who needs to appreciate it–is you.
What do I know about anything? I wonder sometimes, observing the lives of so many people around me. People who have been dealt a hand so much nastier than mine. Who do I think I am, sharing all this “perspective” on deferred hope and unanswered prayers and heartache and loss when their lives are the encyclopedia of suffering? Perhaps it would be a favor to us all if I kept my little sorrows to myself.
What does anything I know mean? I wrestle with that, too, when what strikes such deep chords in me only seems to strike a very few others the same way. Am I just making a fool of myself on both sides? Thinking I know more than I do on the one hand, and on the other, knowing more than most people care to hear?
It’s Not You. It’s Me.
I’m sure I’ll always look like a fool or sound like so much background noise to someone because wherever I am on the spectrum of life experience, I’ll be between these two groups of people. Those with rosier lives than mine, and those with bleaker lives. Those who don’t comprehend my deep water, and those whose deep water I don’t comprehend. To the one I probably seem overly intense. To the other, painfully naïve.
I will never be everyone’s cup of tea.
But not everyone is mine, either, and that has nothing to do with them.
It’s me.
There are some depths of suffering I can’t stomach. It feels like an awful weakness that makes me useless, but there it is. I watched The Hiding Place once. Did not watch it twice. Managed Unbroken, movie and book. Will probably not watch or read either again. Started Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Couldn’t get past his arrival at the concentration camp.
The list goes on. Innumerable stories of incredible strength, faith, and healing, lived by people who didn’t want to stomach their suffering any more than I’m able to, but had no choice. They’re valuable stories with a well-deserved audience that needs the hope they share. That’s not diminished one bit because I have to leave them on the shelf.
Nor are the stories I leave on the shelf because they don’t go deep enough. On my battlefield, they’re a bit too much like sweet Sunday school to feel real. Yet on what battlefields are they real? The battlefields some people are on. Just because a voice doesn’t speak to me doesn’t mean it speaks to no one.
I don’t define the worth of another person’s story.
Why do I let so many people define the worth of mine?
Affirmations Wilt
My primary love language is words of affirmation. I feel most valued when someone tells me I am.
Everyone needs that now and again. To hear, not just hope, they’re appreciated. To receive a compliment, to be noticed.
Here’s the problem. Those affirmations are like a bouquet of roses. They wilt. And the lack of them, if that’s what your value depends on, is like a patch of invasive morning glory, choking everything it coils around and growing back no matter how often you pull it because the roots go all the way to China.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling most valued when someone says you are. Nothing wrong with wanting a bouquet of roses, nothing wrong with giving one. Literally or figuratively. It’s part of this thing called relationships where you show value for and are valued by the people you share your life with.
But if that’s the only time you or someone you love feels valued, if you need for yourself or have to give someone else a bouquet of roses incessantly to keep everyone happy–that’s what we call high-maintenance. And it gets old. For the person always waiting to be maintained and especially for the person who has to do the maintaining.
You don’t know when or if someone will affirm you. If you’re not worth anything until they do, and then only worth something until the bloom fades, and then not worth anything again until someone affirms you again–take it from someone who wastes too much time in this vicious cycle, it’s a miserable way to live. Always at the mercy of whether someone sees you. As though only someone else can see you.
What about you? When was the last time you saw you?
Value the Journey, Not Someone’s Opinion of It
I wonder as I write these posts how frequently I contradict things I’ve previously written. My life is a journey still in progress, so all the truths in my heart have to be adjusted occasionally to make room for and agree with other truths that come along.
Case in point, last week I wrote that my definition of a life with a purpose is one that adds value to someone else’s. That’s what I want my life to be.
Now I’m telling you, and me, that our value can’t depend on the value we bring someone else.
They’re both true.
God can and wants to use us as his hands for other people. Whether he gives us ten talents, five talents, or one, he doesn’t want them buried. He wants them shared.
They might make a superficial person think a little deeper. Let a person in a similar boat to yours know they’re not alone. Even buoy up a struggler on a much rougher sea than yours–truth is truth no matter where you’re swimming.
Your experiences can change lives.
But if they’re only as valuable to you as they are to someone else, you’re not going to care about them enough for long enough to share them with anyone else. Because chances are, more often than not, you won’t know they’re valuable to anyone else.
Their deepest meaning is in what they mean to you.
Whether the truths you know ever pierce another person’s heart, do they pierce yours? Then they’re valuable.
Whether your struggles ever teach anyone else, have they taught you? Then they’re valuable.
Whether your life brings anyone else to God, has it brought you? You better believe that’s worth something.
Even if, maybe especially if, that soul is you.
The value of the journey is in the journey. Not in how many people it helps. Not in how well you recount it, not in how far you circulate it, not in anyone’s opinion of it.
Except maybe yours.
If only one person ever sees how valuable you are, aside from God, it has to be you.
Your Journey Is Your Journey
So let me leave you with the story that sparked this post. Because sometimes the hardest part of valuing your journey is not comparing it to someone else’s.
As I’ve mentioned before, my sister and I are building a house.
A close acquaintance is also building a house nearby.
We don’t know what we’re doing.
He’s a licensed subcontractor, or was for years if he’s not now.
If you ever want to feel incredibly disheartened, build a house alongside a licensed subcontractor and compare your, We don’t know what we’re doing, to his, I know exactly what I’m doing, every step of the way.
And while you’re at it, listen to suggestions from other people, spoken or implied or entirely imagined in your own stressed head, that the concrete crew you hired–who was the only crew of the five you reached out to that would even respond to you–took you for a ride. Charged you more than your neighbor’s crew charged, to do shoddier work than your neighbor’s crew did, and to take four weeks to do what your neighbor’s crew did in four days.
I have never felt so much like I got it so completely wrong.
But the truth, after the dust settled, was that I got it as right as a person who knows nothing knows how to get it.
In the end, he and we got a foundation in the ground. Notwithstanding differences in experience or how the story played out, the job got done.
Our story may have looked all wrong next to the story of a licensed subcontractor. Or next to anyone else’s, for that matter. But none of those are the stories it has to live up to. Only ours. It was our experience. And it was valuable.
Your journey is your journey. It’s not in competition with anyone else’s, and its value doesn’t lie in how perfectly you live it or how many lives it changes. It lies in how it changes yours.
Fix mistakes and learn from them. Change when you’re in the wrong. Recognize when you’re not. Give yourself some credit if you’ve done the best you can. Try again if you haven’t. Give yourself a hug. Appreciate who you are. Appreciate who you’re not.
Value the journey that is your life. In spite of what people say. In spite of what they don’t say.
Whatever condition or stage your life is in, I hope something here has helped you see and embrace its value. It’s a message I desperately need. I pray it’s touched you, too. Please share your thoughts in the comments and pass this post on to anyone you think it might bless. Thank you for being here!
If this resonates with you, these might too:
8 Things to Know When Building a House (Or Anything Else)
Never Lose Faith in the End of the Story
Scripture References
- Matthew 25:14-30 – The Parable of the Talents
- D&C 18:15
Pin it for Later
Age has taught me not to care what others think. Easier said than done. What truly matters is my relationship with God.
Amen!
I love your posts. You al have struggles and having someone be vulnerable enough to share theirs is always inspiring to me. I don’t have the same issues you do, but some of the feelings that come with them are the same, so you are very relatable. Thanks for sharing and keep it up!
Thank you. That’s been exactly my hope in what I write: that the truths will resound even if our specific experiences aren’t all the same. Like you, the stories that strike me deepest are the ones that are vulnerable and real, so no wonder that’s all I know how to write. I look forward to reading yours. 😊